PAST    AND    PRESENT 


T II  OMAS     C  A  II  L  Y  L  E  . 


SntiSt   iet   »a*  icbcit. 


Schiller 


BOHTOiN  : 

CHARLES    C.  LITTLE  A  XL  JAMES  BROWN, 

MDCCCXlilll. 


DUKE 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 


Treasure  %oom 


mt 


?y 


\V 


& 


PAST    AND    PRESENT 


BY 


THOMAS     CARLYLE. 


grnst  i$t  fc>a£  iebeu. 

Schiller. 


BOSTON: 

CHARLES   C.  LITTLE  AND  JAMES  BROWN. 

MDCCCXLIII. 


boston: 
printed  by  freeman  axd  bolles, 

WASHINGTON   STREET. 


C236PA 


AMERICAN  EDITOR'S  NOTICE. 


This  book  is  printed  from  a  private  copy,  partly  in 
manuscript,  sent  by  the  author  to  his  friends  in  this 
country,  and  is  published  for  his  benefit.  I  hope  this 
notice  that  the  profits  of  the  sale  of  this  edition  are 
secured  to  Mr.  Carlyle,  will  persuade  every  well  dis- 
posed publisher   to  respect  his  property  in  his  own 

book. 

R.  W.  Emerson. 

Concord,  Mass.  ) 
May  1,  1843.   1 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  I. -r- Proem. 

PAGE 

Chap.  I.  Midas 1 

II.  The  Sphinx              7 

III.  Manchester  Insurrection 14 

IV.  Morrison's  Pill 22 

V.  Aristocracy  of  Talent 2d 

VI.  Hero-Worship          . 32 

BOOK  II. — The  Ancient  Monk. 


Chap.  I.  Jocelin  of  Brakelond 

39 

II.  St.  Edmundsbury 

46 

III.  Landlord  Edmund 

50 

IV.  Abbot  Hugo 

57 

V.  Twelfth  Century 

62 

VI.  Monk  Samson 

66 

VII.  The  Canvassing 

73 

VIII.  The  Election    ~      . 

76 

IX.  Abbot  Samson 

S3 

X.  Government    . 

89 

XI.  The  Abbot's  Ways 

93 

XII.  The  Abbot's  Troubles 

99 

XIII.  In  Parliament 

104 

XIV.  Henry  of  Essex 

106 

XV.  Practical-Devotional 

110 

XVI.  St.  Edmund    . 

117 

XVII.  The  Beginnings 

125 

VI 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK  III.  — The  Modern  Worker. 


Chap.  I.  Phenomena      .         .      * 
II.  Gospel  of  Mammonism 

III.  Gospel  of  Dilletantism 

IV.  Happy      . 

V.  The  English    . 
VI.  Two  Centuries 
VII.  Over-Production 
VIII.  Unworking  Aristocracy 
IX.  Working  Aristocracy 
X.  Plugson  of  Undershot 
XI.  Labour     . 
XII.  Reward 

XIII.  Democracy 

XIV.  Sir  Jabesh  Windbag 
XV.  Morrison  Again 


PAGE 

137 
145 
151 

154 
159 
167 
171 
175 
183 
188 
196 
201 
209 
221 
225 


BOOK  IV.  — Horoscope. 


Chap.-  I.  Aristocracies  239 

II.  Bribery  Committee  • 251 

III.  The  One  Institution- 256 

IV.  Captains  of  Industry 268 

V.  Permanence 275 

VI.  The  Landed 281 

VII.  The  Gifted 287 

VIII.  The  Didactic  .  292 


BOOK   I 
PROEM. 


CHAPTER   I. 


The  condition  of  England,  on  which  many  pamphlets  are  now 
in  the  course  of  publication,  and  many  thoughts  unpublished  are 
going  on  in  every  reflective  head,  is  justly  regarded  as  one  of  the 
most  ominous,  and  withal  one  of  the  strangest,  ever  seen  in  this 
world.  England  is  full  of  wealth,  of  multifarious  produce,  sup- 
ply for  human  want  in  every  kind  ;  yet  England  is  dying  of  inani- 
tion. With  unabated  bounty  the  land  of  England  blooms  and 
grows  ;  waving  with  yellow  harvests  ;  thick-studded  with  work- 
shops, industrial  implements,  with  fifteen  millions  of  workers, 
understood  to  be  the  strongest,  the  cunningest  and  the  willingest 
our  Earth  ever  had  ;  these  men  are  here  ;  the  work  they  have 
done,  the  fruit  they  have  realised  is  here,  abundant,  exuberant  on 
every  hand  of  us  :  and  behold,  some  baleful  fiat  as  of  Enchant- 
ment has  gone  forth,  saying,  "Touch  it  not,  ye  workers,  ye 
master-workers,  ye  master-idlers  ;  none  of  you  can  touch  it,  no 
man  of  you  shall  be  the  better  for  it ;  this  is  enchanted  fruit !  " 
On  the  poor  workers  such  fiat  falls  first,  in  its  rudest  shape  ;  but 
on  the  rich  master-workers  too  it  falls  ;  neither  can  the  rich 
master-idlers,  nor  any  richest  or  highest  man  escape,  but  all  are 
like  to  be  brought  low  with  it,  and  made  '  poor '  enough,  in  the 
money-sense  or  a  far  fataller  one. 

Of  these  successful  skilful  workers  some  two  millions,  it  is 
now  counted,  sit  in  Workhouses,  Poor-law  Prisons  ;  or  have  '  out- 
door relief '  flung  over  the  wall  to  them,  — the  workhouse  Bastille 
being  filled  to  bursting,  and  the  strong  Poor-law  broken  asunder 
by  a  stronger.*  They  sit  there,  these  many  months  now  ;  their 
hope  of  deliverance  as  yet  small.     In  workhouses,  pleasantly  so 

*  The  Return  of  Paupers  for  England  and  Wales,  at  Ladyday,  1842,  is, 
1  In-door  221,687,  Out-door  1,207,402,  Total  1,  429,089.'     {Official  Report.) 
1 


named,  because  work  cannot  be  done  in  them.  Twelve  hundred 
thousand  workers  in  England  alone  ;  their  cunning  right-hand 
lamed,  lying  idle  in  their  sorrowful  bosom  ;  their  hopes,  outlooks, 
share  of  this  fair  world,  shut  in  by  narrow  walls.  They  sit  there, 
pent  up,  as  in  a  kind  of  horrid  enchantment;  glad  to  be  impris- 
oned and  enchanted,  that  they  may  not  perish  starved.  The 
picturesque  Tourist,  in  a  sunny  autumn  day,  through  this  boun- 
teous realm  of  England,  descries  the  Union  Workhouse  on  his 
path.  '  Passing  by  the  Workhouse  of  St.  Ives  in  Huntingdon- 
'  shire,  on  a  bright  day  last  autumn,'  says  the  picturesque  Tour- 
ist, '  I  saw  sitting  on  wooden  benches,  in  front  of  their  Bastille 
'  and  within  their  ring-wall  and  its  railings,  some  half-hundred 
'  or  more  of  these  men.  Tall  robust  figures,  young  mostly  or  of 
'  middle  age  ;  of  honest  countenance,  many  of  them  thoughtful 
'  and  even  intelligent-looking  men.  Theysat  there,  near  by  one 
1  another  ;  but  in  a  kind  of  torpor,  especially  in  a  silence,  which 
'  was  very  striking.  In  silence  :  for,  alas,  what  word  was  to  be 
'  said?  An  Earth  all  lying  round,  crying,  Come  and  till  me, 
'  come  and  reap  me  ;  —  yet  we  here  sit  enchanted  !  In  the  eyes 
'  and  brows  of  these  men  hung  the  gloomiest  expression,  not  of 
'  anger,  but  of  grief  and  shame  and  manifold  inarticulate  distress 
'  and  weariness ;  they  returned  my  glance  with  a  glance  that 
1  seemed  to  say,  "  Do  not  look  at  us.  We  sit  enchanted  here,  we 
'know  not  why.  The  Sun  shines  and  the  Earth  calls  ;  and,  by  the 
*  governing  Powers  and  Impotences  of  this  England,  we  are  for- 
'  bidden  to  obey.  It  is  impossible,  they  tell  us!".  There  was 
1  something  that  reminded  me  of  Dante's  Hell  in  the  look  of  all 
'  this  ;  and  I  rode  swiftly  away.' 

So  many  hundred  thousands  sit  in  workhouses  :  and  other  hun- 
dred thousands  have  not  yet  got  even  workhouses  ;  and  in  thrifty 
Scotland  itself,  in  Glasgow  or  Edinburgh  City,  in  their  dark  lanes, 
hidden  from  all  but  the  eye  of  God,  and  of  rare  Benevolence  the 
minister  of  God,  there  are  scenes  of  woe  and  destitution  and  deso- 
lation, such  as,  one  may  hope,  the  Sun  never  saw  before  in  the 
most  barbarous  regions  where  men  dwelt.  Competent  witnesses, 
the  brave  and  humane  Dr.  Alison,  who  speaks  what  he  knows, 
whose  noble  Healing  Art  in  his  charitable  hands  becomes  once 
more  a  truly  sacred  one,  report  these  things  for  us  :  these  things 


MIDAS.  3 

are  not  of  this  year,  or  of  last  year,  have  no  reference  to  our  pre- 
sent state  of  commercial  stagnation,  but  only  to  the  common  state. 
Not  in  sharp  fever-fits,  but  in  chronic  gangrene  of  this  kind  is 
Scotland  suffering.  A  Poor-Law,  any  and  every  Poor-Law,  it 
may  be  observed,  is  but  a  temporary  measure  ;  an  anodyne,  not  a 
remedy  :  Rich  and  Poor,  when  once  the  naked  facts  of  their  con- 
dition have  come  into  collision,  cannot  long  subsist  together  on  a 
mere  Poor-Law.  True  enough  :  —  and  yet,  human  beings  cannot 
be  left  to  die  !  Scotland  too,  till  something  better  come,  must 
have  a  Poor-Law,  if  Scotland  is  not  to  be  a  byword  among  the 
nations.  O,  what  a  waste  is  there;  of  noble  and  thrice-noble 
national  virtues ;  peasant  Stoicisms,  Heroisms ;  valiant  manful 
habits,  soul  of  a  Nation's  worth,  —  which  all  the  metal  of  Potosi 
cannot  purchase  back  ;  to  which  the  metal  of  Potosi,  and  all  you 
can  buy  with  it,  is  dross  and  dust ! 

Why  dwell  on  this  aspect  of  the  matter?  It  is  too  indisputable, 
not  doubtful  now  to  any  one.  Descend  where  you  will  into  the 
lower  class,  in  Town  or  Country,  by  what  avenue  you  will,  by 
Factory  Inquiries,  Agricultural  Inquiries,  by  Revenue  Returns, 
by  Mining-Laborer  Committees,  by  opening  your  own  eyes  and 
•looking,  the  same  sorrowful  result  discloses  itself :  you  have  to 
admit  that  the  working  body  of  this  rich  English  Nation  has  sunk 
or  is  fast  sinking  into  a  state,  to  which,  all  sides  of  it  considered, 
there  was  literally  never  any  parallel.  A't  Stockport  Assizes, — 
and  this  too  has  no  reference  to  the  present  state  of  trade,  being 
of  date  prior  to  that,  —  a  Mother  and  a  Father  are  arraigned  and 
found  guilty  of  poisoning  three  of  their  children,  to  defraud  a 
'  burial-society '  of  some  3/.  85.  due  on  the  death  of  each  child : 
they  are  arraigned,  found  guilty ;  and  the  official  authorities,  it  is 
whispered,  hint  that  perhaps  the  case  is  not  solitary,  that  perhaps 
you  had  better  not  probe  farther  into  that  department  of  things. 
This  is  in  the  autumn  of  1841 ;  the  crime  itself  is  of  the  previous 
year  or  season.  "  Brutal  savages,  degraded  Irish,"  mutters  the 
idle  reader  of  Newspapers ;  hardly  lingering  on  this  incident. 
Yet  it  is  an  incident  worth  lingering  on  ;  the  depravity,  savagery 
and  degraded  Irishism  being  never  so  well  admitted.  In  the 
British  land,  a  human  Mother  and  Father,  of  white  skin  and  pro- 
fessing the  Christian  religion,  had  done  this  thing ;  they,  with 


their  Irishism  and  necessity  and  savagery,  had  been  driven  to  do 
it.  Such  instances  are  like  the  highest  mountain  apex  emerged 
into  view ;  under  which  lies  a  whole  mountain  region  and  land, 
not  yet  emerged.  A  human  Mother  and  Father  had  said  to  them- 
selves, What  shall  we  do  to  escape  starvation?  We  are  deep 
sunk  here,  in  our  dark  cellar;  and  help  is  far. — Yes,  in  the 
Ugolino  Hunger-tower  stern  things  happen ;  best-loved  little 
Gaddo  fallen  dead  on  Ms  Father's  knees! — The  Stockport 
Mother  and  Father  think  and  hint :  Our  poor  little  standing 
Tom,  who  cries  all  day  for  victuals,  who  will  see  only  evil  and 
not  good  in  this  world  :  if  he  were  out  of  misery  at  once  ;  he  well 
dead,  and  the  rest  of  us  perhaps  kept  alive?  It  is  thought,  and 
hinted ;  at  last  it  is  done.  And  now  Tom  being  killed,  and  all 
spent  and  eaten,  Is  it  poor  little  starveling  Jack  that  must  go,  or 
poor  little  starveling  Will?  —  What  an  inquiry  of  ways  and 
means ! 

In  starved  sieged  cities,  in  the  uttermost  doomed  ruin  of  old 
Jerusalem  fallen  under  the  wrath  of  God,  it  was  prophesied  and 
said,  '  The  hands  of  the  pitiful  women  have  sodden  their  own 
children.'  The  stern  Hebrew  imagination  could  conceive  no 
blacker  gulf  of  wretchedness  ;  that  was  the  ultimatum  of  de- 
graded god-punished  man.  And  we  here,  in  modern  England, 
exuberant  with  supply  of  all  kinds,  besieged  by  nothing  if  it  be 

not  by  invisible  Enchantments,  are  we  reaching  that  ? How 

come  these  things  ?  Wherefore  are  they,  wherefore  should  they 
be? 

Nor  are  they  of  the  St.  Ives  workhouses,  of  the  Glasgow  lanes, 
and  Stockport  cellars,  the  only  unblessed  among  us.  This  suc- 
cessful industry  of  England,  with  its  plethoric  wealth,  has  as  yet 
made  nobody  rich  ;  it  is  an  enchanted  wealth,  and  belongs  yet  to 
nobody.  We  might  ask,  Which  of  us  has  it  enriched  ?  We  can 
spend  thousands  where  we  once  spent  hundreds  ;  but  can  pur- 
chase nothing  good  with  them.  In  Poor  and  Rich,  instead  of  no- 
ble thrift  and  plenty,  there  is  idle  luxury  alternating  with  mean 
scarcity  and  inability.  We  have  sumptuous  garnitures  for  our 
Life,  but  have  forgotten  to  live  in  the  middle  of  them.  It  is  an 
enchanted  wealth  ;  no  man  of  us  can  yet  touch  it.     The  class  of 


MIDAS.  5 

men  who  feel  that  they  are  truly  better  off  by  means  of  it,  let 
them  give  us  their  name  ! 

Many  men  eat  finer  cookery,  drink  dearer  liquors,  —  with  what 
advantage  they  can  report,  and  their  Doctors  can :  but  in  the 
heart  of  them,  if  we  go  out  of  the  dyspeptic  stomach,  what  in- 
crease of  blessedness  is  there  ?  Are  they  better,  beautifuller, 
stronger,  braver  ?  Are  they  even  what  they  call  '  happier  ?  '  Do 
they  look  with  satisfaction  on  more  things  and  human  faces  in 
this  God's-Earth  ;  do  more  things  and  human  faces  look  with 
satisfaction  on  them?  Not  so.  Human  faces  gloom  dis- 
cordantly, disloyally  on  one  another.  Things,  if  it  be  not  mere 
cotton  and  iron  things,  are  growing  disobedient  to  man.  The 
Master  Worker  is  enchanted,  for  the  present,  like  his  Workhouse 
Workman ;  clamours,  in  vain  hitherto,  for  a  very  simple  sort  of 
1  Liberty :  '  the  liberty  '  to  buy  where  he  finds  it  cheapest,  to  sell 
where  he  finds  it  dearest.'  With  guineas  jingling  in  every  pocket, 
he  was  no  whit  richer  ;  but  now,  the  very  guineas  threatening  to 
vanish,  he  feels  that  he  is  poor  indeed.  Poor  Master  Worker ! 
And  the  Master  Unworker,  is  not  he  in  a  still  fataller  situation  ? 
Pausing  amid  his  game-preserves,  with  awful  eye,  —  as  he  well 
may  !  Coercing  fifty-pound  tenants  ;  coercing,  bribing,  cajoling  ; 
doing  what  he  likes  with  his  own.  His  mouth  full  of  loud  futili- 
ties, and  arguments  to  prove  the  excellence  of  his  Corn-Law  ;  and 
in  his  heart  the  blackest  misgiving,  a  desperate  half-consciousness 
that  his  excellent  Corn-Law  is  indefensible,  that  his  loud  argu- 
ments for  it  are  of  a  kind  to  strike  men  too  literally  dumb. 

To  whom,  then,  is  this  wealth  of  England  wealth?  Who  is  it 
that  it  blesses  ;  makes  happier,  wiser,  beautifuller,  in  any  way 
better'?  Who  has  got  hold  of  it,  to  make  it  fetch  and  carry  for 
him,  like  a  true  servant,  not  like  a  false  mock-servant ;  to  do  him 
any  real  service  whatsoever?  As  yet  no  one.  We  have  more 
riches  than  any  Nation  ever  had  before  ;  we  have  less  good  of 
them  than  any  Nation  ever  had  before.  Our  successful  industry 
is  hitherto  unsuccessful ;  a  strange  success,  if  we  stop  here  !  In 
the  midst  of  plethoric  plenty,  the  people  perish  ;  with  gold  walls, 
and  full  barns,  no  man  feels  himself  safe  or  satisfied.  Workers, 
Master  Workers,  Unworkers,  all  men  come  to  a  pause  ;  stand 
fixed,  and  cannot  farther.     Fatal  paralysis  spreading  inwards, 


6  PROEM. 

from  the  extremities,  in  St.  Ives  workhouses,  in  Stockport  cellars, 
through  all  limbs,  as  if  towards  the  heart  itself.  Have  we 
actually  got  enchanted,  then  ;  accursed  by  some  god  ?  — 

Midas  longed  for  gold,  and  insulted  the  Olympians.  He  got 
gold,  so  that  whatsoever  he  touched  became  gold,  —  and  he,  with 
his  long  ears,  was  little  the  better  for  it.  Midas  had  misjudged 
the  celestial  music-tones  ;  Midas  had  insulted  Apollo  and  the 
gods  :  the  gods  gave  him  his  wish,  and  a  pair  of  long  ears,  which 
also  were  a  good  appendage  to  it.  What  a  truth  in  these  old 
Fables ! 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE    SPHINX. 


How  true,  for  example,  is  that  other  old  Fable  of  the  Sphinx, 
who  sat  by  the  wayside,  propounding  her  riddle  to  the  passengers, 
which  if  they  could  not  answer  she  destroyed  them !  Such  a 
Sphinx  is  this  Life  of  ours,  to  all  men  and  societies  of  men. 
Nature,  like  the  Sphinx,  is  of  womanly  celestial  loveliness  and 
tenderness  ;  the  face  and  bosom  of  a  goddess,  but  ending  in  claws 
and  the  body  of  a  lioness.  There  is  in  her  a  celestial  beauty,  — 
which  means  celestial  order,  pliancy  to  wisdom  ;  but  there  is  also 
a  darkness,  a  ferocity,  fatality,  which  are  infernal.  She  is  a  god- 
dess, but  one  not  yet  disimprisoned  ;  one  still  half-imprisoned, — 
the  inarticulate,  lovely  still  encased  in  the  inarticulate,  chaotic. 
How  true  !  And  does  she  not  propound  her  riddles  to  us  1  Of 
each  man  she  asks  daily,  in  mild  voice,  yet  with  a  terrible  signifi- 
cance, "  Knowest  thou  the  meaning  of  this  Day?  What  thou 
canst  do  Today;  wisely  attempt  to  do?"  Nature,  Universe, 
Destiny,  Existence,  howsoever  we  name  this  grand  unnameable 
Fact  in  the  midst  of  which  we  live  and  struggle,  is  as  a  heavenly 
bride  and  conquest  to  the  wise  and  brave,  to  them  who  can  discern 
her  behests  and  do  them  ;  a  destroying  fiend  to  them  who  cannot. 
Answer  her  riddle,  it  is  well  with  thee.  Answer  it  not,  pass  on 
regarding  it  not,  it  will  answer  itself ;  the  solution  for  thee  is  a 
thing  of  teeth  and  claws;  Nature  is  a  dumb  lioness,  deaf  to  thy 
pleadings,  fiercely  devouring.  Thou  art  not  now  her  victorious 
bridegroom  ;  thou  art  her  mangled  victim ,  scattered  on  the  preci- 
pices, as  a  slave  found  treacherous,  recreant,  ought  to  be  and 
must. 

With  Nations  it  is  as  with  individuals :  Can  they  rede  the 
riddle  of  Destiny  ?     This  English  Nation,  will  it  get  to  know  the 


8  PROEM. 

meaning  of  its  strange  new  Today  ?  Is  there  sense  enough 
extant,  discoverable  anywhere  or  anyhow,  in  our  united  twenty- 
seven  million  heads  to  discern  the  same ;  valour  enough  in  our 
twenty-seven  million  hearts  to  dare  and  do  the  bidding  thereof? 
It  will  be  seen !  — 

The  secret  of  gold  Midas,  which  he  with  his  long  ears  never 
could  discover,  was,  That  he  had  offended  the  Supreme  Powers  ; 
—  that  he  had  parted  company  with  the  eternal  inner  Facts  of  this 
Universe,  and  followed  the  transient  outer  Appearances  thereof; 
and  so  was  arrived  here.  Properly  it  is  the  secret  of  all  unhappy 
men  and  unhappy  nations.  Had  they  known  Nature's  right 
truth,  Nature's  right  truth  would  have  made  them  free.  They 
have  become  enchanted ;  stagger  spell-bound,  reeling  on  the 
brink  of  huge  peril,  because  they  were  not  wise  enough.  They 
have  forgotten  the  right  Inner  True,  and  taken  up  with  the  Outer 
Shamtrue.  They  answer  the  Sphinx's  question  wrong.  Foolish 
men  cannot  answer  it  aright !  Foolish  men  mistake  transitory 
semblance  for  eternal  fact,  and  go  astray  more  and  more. 

Foolish  men  imagine  that  because  judgment  for  an  evil 
thing  is  delayed,  there  is  no  justice,  but  an  accidental  one,  here 
below.  Judgment  for  an  evil  thing  is  many  times  delayed  some 
day  or  two,  some  century  or  two,  but  it  is  sure  as  life,  it  is  sure 
as  death  !  In  the  centre  of  the  world-whirlwind,  verily  now  as  in 
the  oldest  days,  dwells  and  speaks  a  God.  The  great  soul  of  the 
world  is  just.  O  brother,  can  it  be  needful  now,  at  this  late 
epoch  of  experience,  after  eighteen  centuries  of  Christian  preach- 
ing for  one  thing,  to  remind  thee  of  such  a  fact ;  which  all  man- 
ner of  Mahometans,  old  Pagan  Romans,  Jews,  Scythians  and 
heathen  Greeks,  and  indeed  more  or  less  all  men  that  God  made, 
have  managed  at  one  time  to  see  into  ;  nay,  which  thou  thyself, 
till  '  redtape  '  strangled  the  inner  life  of  thee,  hadst  once  some 
inkling  of:  That  there  is  justice  here  below;  and  even,  at  bot- 
tom, that  there  is  nothing  else  but  justice  !  Forget  that,  thou 
hast  forgotten  all.  Success  will  never  more  attend  thee  :  how 
can  it  now  ?  Thou  hast  the  whole  Universe  against  thee.  No 
more  success  :  mere  sham-success,  for  a  day  and  days  ;  rising 
ever  higher,  —  towards  its  Tarpeian  Rock.  Alas,  how,  in  thy 
soft-hung  Longacre  vehicle,  of  polished  leather  to  the  bodily  eye, 


THE    SPHINX.  « 

of  redtape  philosophy,  of  expediencies,  clubroom  moralities,  Par- 
liamentary majorities  to  the  mind's  eye,  thou  beautifully  rollest : 
but  knowest  thou  whitherward  1  It  is  towards  the  road's  end. 
Old  use-and-wont ;  established  methods,  habitudes,  once  true  and 
wise  ;  man's  noblest  tendency,  his  perseverance,  and  man's  ig- 
noblest,  his  inertia  ;  whatsoever  of  noble  and  ignoble  Conserva- 
tism there  is  in  men  and  Nations,  strongest  always  in  the  strong- 
est men  and  Nations  :  all  this  is  as  a  road  to  thee,  paved  smooth 
through  the  abyss,  —  till  all  this  end.  Till  men's  bitter  necessi- 
ties can  endure  thee  no  more.  Till  Nature's  patience  with  thee 
is  done ;  and  there  is  no  road  or  footing  any  farther,  and  the 
abyss  yawns  sheer  !  — 

Parliament  and  the  Courts  of  Westminster  are  venerable  tome  ; 
how  venerable  ;  grey  with  a  thousand  years  of  honourable  age  ! 
For  a  thousand  years  and  more,  Wisdom  and  faithful  Valour, 
struggling  amid  much  Folly  and  greedy  Baseness,  not  without 
most  sad  distortions  in  the  struggle,  have  built  them  up  ;  and 
they  are  as  we  see.  For  a  thousand  years,  this  English  Nation 
has  found  them  useful  or  supportable ;  they  have  served  this 
English  Nation's  want ;  been  a  road  to  it  through  the  abyss  of 
Time.  They  are  venerable,  they  are  great  and  strong.  And 
yet  it  is  good  to  remember  always  that  they  are  not  the  venera- 
blest,  nor  the  greatest,  nor  the  strongest !  Acts  of  Parliament 
are  venerable ;  but  if  they  correspond  not  with  the  writing  on 
the  '  xldamant  Tablet,'  what  are  they  1  Properly  their  one  ele- 
ment of  venerableness,  of  strength  or  greatness,  is,  that  they 
at  all  times  correspond  therewith  as  near  as  by  human  possi- 
bility they  can.  They  are  cherishing  destruction  in  their  bosom 
every  hour  that  they  continue  otherwise. 

Alas,  how  many  causes  that  can  plead  well  for  themselves  in 
the  Courts  of  Westminster ;  and  yet  in  the  general  Court  of  the 
Universe,  and  free  Soul  of  Man,  have  no  word  to  utter  !  Honour- 
able Gentlemen  may  find  this  worth  considering,  in  times  like 
ours.  And  truly,  the  din  of  triumphant  Law-logic,  and  all  shak- 
ing of  horse-hair  wigs  and  learned-sergeant  gowns  having  com- 
fortably ended,  we  shall  do  well  to  ask  ourselves  withal,  What 
says  that  high  and  highest  Court  to  the  verdict !  For  it  is  the 
Court  of  Courts,  that  same  ;  where  the  universal  soul  of  Fact 


10 


and  very  Truth  sits  President ;  — and  thitherward,  more  and  more 
swiftly,  with  a  really  terrible  increase  of  swiftness,  all  causes  do 
in  these  days  crowd  for  revisal,  — for  confirmation,  for  modifiea" 
tion,  for  reversal  with  costs.  Dost  thou  know  that  Court ;  hast 
thou  had  any  Law-practice  there  1  What,  didst  thou  never  enter  ; 
never  file  any  petition  of  redress,  reclaimer,  disclaimer  or  demur- 
rer, written  as  in  thy  heart's  blood,  for  thy  own  behoof  or  anoth- 
er's ;  and  silently  await  the  issue  ?  Thou  knowest  not  such  a 
Court  1  Hast  merely  heard  of  it  by  faint  tradition  as  a  thing  that 
was  or  had  been  1    Of  thee,  I  think,  we  shall  get  little  benefit. 

For  the  gowns  of  learned-sergeants  are  good  ;  parchment 
records,  fixed  forms,  and  poor  terrestrial  Justice,  with  or  withbut 
horse-hair,  what  sane  man  will  not  reverence  these  1  And  yet, 
behold,  the  man  is  not  sane  but  insane,  who  considers  these  alone 
as  venerable.  Oceans  of  horse-hair,  continents  of  parchment,  and 
learned-sergeant  eloquence,  were  it  continued  till  the  learned 
tongue  wore  itself  small  in  the  indefatigable  learned  mouth,  can- 
not make  unjust  just.  The  grand  question  still  remains,  Was  the 
judgment  just  1  If  unjust,  it  will  not  and  cannot  get  harbour  for 
itself,  or  continue  to  have  footing  in  this  Universe,  which  was 
made  by  other  than  One  Unjust.  Enforce  it  by  never  such  statut- 
ing,  three  readings,  royal  assents  ;  blow  it  to  the  four  winds  with 
all  manner  of  quilted  trumpeters  and  pursuivants,  in  the  rear  of 
them  never  so  many  gibbets  and  hangmen,  it  will  not  stand,  it 
cannot  stand.  From  all  souls  of  men,  from  all  ends  of  Nature, 
from  the  Throne  of  God  above,  there  are  voices  bidding  it :  Away, 
away  !  Does  it  take  no  warning  ;  does  it  stand,  strong  in  its 
three  readings,  in  its  gibbets  and  artillery-parks  ?  The  more  woe 
is  to  it,  the  frightfuller  woe.  It  will  continue  standing,  for  its  day, 
for  its  year,  for  its  century,  doing  evil  all  the  while  ;  but  it  has  One 
enemy  who  is  Almighty  :  dissolution,  explosion,  and  the  ever- 
lasting Laws  of  Nature  incessantly  advance  towards  it ;  and  the 
deeper  its  rooting,  more  obstinate  its  continuing,  the  deeper  also 
and  huger  will  its  ruin  and  overturn  be. 

In  this  God's-world,  wTith  its  wild- whirling  eddies  and  mad 
foam-oceans,  wrhere  men  and  nations  perish  as  if  without  law,  and 
judgment  for  an  unjust  thing  is  sternly  delayed,  dost  thou  think 
that  there  is  therefore  no  justice  ?     It  is  what  the  fool  hath  said  in 


THE    SPHINX.  II 

his  heart.  It  is  what  the  wise,  in  all  times,  were  wise  because 
they  denied,  and  knew  forever  not  to  be.  I  tell  thee  again,  there  / 
is  nothing-  else  but  justice.  One  strong  thing  I  find  here  below  : 
the  just  thing,  the  true  thing.  My  friend,  if  thou  hadst  all  the 
artillery  of  Woolwich  trundling  at  thy  back  in  support  of  an  un- 
just thing  ;  and  infinite  bonfires  visibly  waiting  ahead  of  thee,  to 
blaze  centuries  long  for  thy  victory  on  behalf  of  it,  —  I  would 
advise  thee  to  call  halt,  to  fling  down  thy  baton,  and  say,  "  In 
God's  name,  No  !  "  Thy  '  success?  '  Poor  devil,  what  will  thy 
success  amount  to  1  If  the  thing  is  unjust,  thou  hast  not  suc- 
ceeded ;  no,  not  though  bonfires  blazed  from  North  to  South,  and 
bells  rang,  and  editors  wrote  leading- articles,  and  the  just  thing 
lay  trampled  out  of  sight,  to  all  mortal  eyes  an  abolished  and 
annihilated  thing.  Success  ?  In  few  years,  thou  wilt  be  dead 
and  dark,  —  all  cold,  eyeless,  deaf;  no  blaze  of  bonfires,  ding- 
dong  of  bells  or  leading-articles  visible  or  audible  to  thee  again  at 
all  forever  :  What  kind  of  success  is  that !  — 

It  is  true  all  goes  by  approximation  in  this  world  ;  with  any  not 
insupportable  approximation  we  must  be  patient.  There  is  a  noble 
Conservatism  as  well  as  an  ignoble.  Would  to  Heaven,  for  the 
sake  of  Conservatism  itself,  the  noble  alone  were  left,  and  the 
ignoble,  by  some  kind  severe  hand,  were  ruthlessly  lopped  away, 
forbidden  ever  more  to  shew  itself !  For  it  is  the  right  and  noble 
alone  that  will  have  victory  in  this  struggle  ;  the  rest  is  wholly 
an  obstruction,  a  postponement  and  fearful  imperilment  of  the 
victory.  Towards  an  eternal  centre  of  right  and  nobleness,  and 
of  that  only,  is  all  this  confusion  tending.  We  already  know 
whither  it  is  all  tending  ;  what  will  have  victory,  what  will  have 
none  !  The  Heaviest  will  reach  the  centre.  The  Heaviest, 
sinking  through  .  complex  fluctuating  media  and  vortices,  has  its 
deflexions,  its  obstructions,  nay  at  times  its  resiliences,  its  rebound- 
ings  ;  whereupon  some  blockhead  shall  be  heard  jubilating,  "  See, 
your  Heaviest  ascends  !  "  —  but  at  all  moments  it  is  moving  cen- 
treward,  fast  as  is  convenient  for  it;  sinking,  sinking  ;  and,  by 
laws  older  than  the  World,  old  as  the  Maker's  first  Plan  of  the 
World,  it  has  to  arrive  there. 

Await  the  issue.     In  all  battles,  if  you  await  the  issue,  each 


12  PROEM. 

fighter  has  prospered  according-  to  his  right.  His  right  and  his 
might,  at  the  close  of  the  account,  were  one  and  the  same.  He 
has  fought  with  all  his  might,  and  in  exact  proportion  to  all  his 
light  he  has  prevailed.  His  very  death  is  no  victory  over  him. 
He  dies  indeed  ;  but  his  work  lives,  very  truly  lives.  A  heroic 
Wallace,  quartered  on  the  scaffold,  cannot  hinder  that  his  Scot- 
land become,  one  day,  a  part  of  England  :  but  he  does  hinder 
that  it  become,  on  tyrannous  unfair  terms,  a  part  of  it ;  commands 
still,  as  with  a  god's  voice,  from  his  old  Valhalla  and  Temple  of 
the  Brave,  that  there  be  a  just  real  union  as  of  brother  and 
brother,  not  a  false  and  merely  semblant  one  as  of  slave  and 
master.  If  the  union  with  England  be  in  fact  one  of  Scotland's 
chief  blessings,  we  thank  Wallace  withal  that  it  was  not  the  chief 
curse.  Scotland  is  not  Ireland  :  no,  because  brave  men  rose 
there,  and  said,  "  Behold,  ye  must  not  tread  us  down  like  slaves  ; 
and  ye  shall  not,  —  and  cannot!  "  Fight  on,  thou  brave  true 
heart,  and  falter  not,  through  dark  fortune  and  through  bright. 
The  cause  thou  lightest  for,  so  far  as  it  is  true,  no  farther,  yet 
precisely  so  far,  is  very  sure  of  victory.  The  falsehood  alone  of 
it  will  be  conquered,  will  be  abolished,  as  it  ought  to  be  :  but  the 
truth  of  it  is  part  of  Nature's  own  Laws,  cooperates  with  the 
World's  eternal  Tendencies,  and  cannot  be  conquered. 

The  dust  of  controversy,  what  is  it  but  the  falsehood  flying  off 
from  all  manner  of  conflicting  true  forces,  and  making  such  a 
loud  dust-whirlwind,  — that  so  the  truths  alone  may  remain,  and 
embrace  brother-like  in  some  true  resulting-force  !  It  is  ever  so. 
Savage  fighting  Heptarchies  :  their  fighting  is  an  ascertainment, 
who  has  the  right  to  rule  over  whom  ;  that  out  of  such  waste- 
bickering  Saxondom  a  peacefully  cooperating  England  may  arise. 
Seek  through  this  Universe  ;  if  with  other  than  owl's  eyes,  thou 
wilt  find  nothing  nourished  there,  nothing  kept  in  life,  but  what 
has  right  to  nourishment  and  life.  The  rest,  look  at  it  with  other 
than  owl's  eyes,  is  not  living  ;  is  all  dying,  all  as  good  as  dead  ! 
Justice  was  ordained  from  the  foundations  of  the  world  ;  and  will 
last  with  the  world  and  longer. 

From  which  I  infer  that  the  inner  sphere  of  Fact,  in  this 
present  England  as  elsewhere,   differs  infinitely  from  the  outer 


THE    SPHINX.  13 

sphere  and  spheres  of  Semblance.  That  the  Temporary,  here 
as  elsewhere,  is  too  apt  to  carry  it  over  the  Eternal.  That  he 
who  dwells  in  the  temporary  Semblances,  and  does  not  penetrate 
into  the  eternal  Substance,  will  not  answer  the  Sphinx-riddle  of 
Today,  or  of  any  Day.  For  the  substance  alone  is  substantial  ; 
that  is  the  law  of  Fact :  if  you  discover  not  that,  Fact,  who 
already  knows  it,  will  let  you  also  know  it  by  and  by  ! 

What  is  Justice?  that,  on  the  whole,  is  the  question  of  the 
Sphinx  to  us.  The  law  of  Fact  is,  that  Justice  must  and  will 
be  done.  The  sooner  the  better  ;  for  the  Time  grows  stringent, 
frightfully  pressing!  "  What  is  Justice  ? "  ask  many,  to  whom 
cruel  Fact  alone  will  be  able  to  prove  responsive.  It  is  like  jest- 
ing Pilate  asking,  What  is  truth  1  Jesting  *  Pilate  had  not  the 
smallest  chance  to  ascertain  what  was  Truth.  He  could  not  have 
known  it,  had  a  god  shewn  it  to  him.  Thick  serene  opacity, 
thicker  than  amaurosis,  veiled  those  smiling  eyes  of  his  to  Truth  ; 
the  inner  retina  of  them  was  gone  paralytic,  dead.  He  looked 
at  Truth  ;  and  discerned  her  not,  there  where  she  stood.  "What 
is  justice?"  The  clothed  embodied  Justice  that  sits  in  West- 
minster Hall,  with  penalties,  parchments,  tipstaves,  is  very  visible. 
But  the  wnembodied  Justice,  whereof  that  other  is  either  an  em- 
blem, or  else  is  a  fearful  indescribability,  is  not  so  visible !  For 
the  unembodied  Justice  is  of  Heaven  ;  a  Spirit,  and  Divinity  of 
Heaven,  —  mvisible  to  all  but  the  noble  and  pure  of  soul.  The 
impure  ignoble  gaze  with  eyes,  and  she  is  not  there.  They  will 
prove  it  to  you  by  logic,  by  endless  Hansard  Debatings,  by  bursts 
of  Parliamentary  eloquence.  It  is  not  consolatory  to  behold  ! 
For  properly,  as  many  men  as  there  are  in  a  Nation  who  can 
withal  see  Heaven's  invisible  Justice,  and  know  it  to  be  on  Earth 
also  omnipotent,  so  many  men  are  there  who  stand  between  a 
Nation  and  perdition.  So  many,  and  no  more.  Heavy-laden 
England,  how  many  hast  thou  in  this  hour?  The  Supreme 
Power  sends  new  and  ever  new,  all  born  at  least  with  hearts  of 
flesh  and  not  of  stone  ;  —  and  heavy  Misery  itself,  once  heavy 
enough,  will  prove  didactic  !  — 


CHAPTER  III. 


MANCHESTER    INSURRECTION. 


Blusterowski,  Colacorde,  and  other  Editorial  prophets  of  the 
Continental  Democratic  Movement,  have  in  their  leading-articles 
shewn  themselves  disposed  to  vilipend  the  late  Manchester  Insur- 
rection, as  evincing  in  the  rioters  an  extreme  backwardness  to 
battle  ;  nay  as  betokening,  in  the  English  People  itself,  perhaps 
a  want  of  the  proper  animal-courage  indispensable  in  these  ages. 
A  million  hungry  operative  men  started  up,  in  utmost  paroxysm 
of  desperate  protest  against  their  lot  ;  and,  ask  Colacorde  and 
company,  How  many  shots  were  fired  ?  Very  few  in  comparison ! 
Certain  hundreds  of  drilled  soldiers  sufficed  to  suppress  this  mil- 
lion-headed hydra,  and  tread  it  down,  without  the  smallest  ap- 
peasement or  hope  of  such,  into  its  subterranean  settlements  again, 
there  to  reconsider  itself.  Compared  with  our  revolts  in  Lyons, 
in  Warsaw  and  elsewhere,  to  say  nothing  of  incomparable  Paris 
City  past  or  present,  what  a  lamblike  Insurrection  !  — 

The  present  Editor  is  not  here,  with  his  readers,  to  vindicate 
the  character  of  Insurrections ;  nor  does  it  matter  to  us  whether 
Blusterowski  and  the  rest  may  think  the  English  a  courageous 
people  or  not  courageous.  In  passing,  however,  let  us  mention 
that,  to  our  view,  this  was  not  an  unsuccessful  Insurrection  ;  that 
as  Insurrections  go,  we  have  not  heard  lately  of  any  that  suc- 
ceeded so  well. 

A  million  of  hungry  operative  men,  as  Blusterowski  says,  rose 
all  up,  came  all  out  into  the  streets,  and  —  stood  there.  "What 
other  could  they  do  1  Their  wrongs  and  griefs  were  bitter,  in- 
supportable, their  rage  against  the  same  was  just :  but  who  are 
they  that  cause  these  wrongs,  who  that  will  honestly  make  effort 
to  redress  them  1  Our  enemies  are  we  know  not  who  or  what ; 
our  friends  are  we  know  not  where  !     How  shall  we  attack  any 


MANCHESTER  INSURRECTION.  15 

one,  shoot  or  be  shot  by  any  one?  O,  if  the  accursed  invisible 
Nightmare,  that  is  crushing  out  the  life  of  us  and  ours,  would 
take  a  shape  ;  approach  us  like  the  Hyrcanian  tiger,  the  Behe- 
moth of  Chaos,  the  Archfiend  himself;  in  any  shape  that  we 
could  see  and  fasten  on  !  —  A  man  can  have  himself  shot  with 
cheerfulness  ;  but  it  needs  first  that  he  see  clearly  for  what. 
Shew  him  the  divine  face  of  Justice,  then  the  diabolic  monster 
which  is  eclipsing  that :  he  will  fly  at  the  throat  of  such  monster, 
never  so  monstrous,  and  need  no  bidding  to  do  it.  Woolwich 
grapeshot  will  sweep  clear  all  streets,  blast  into  invisibility  so 
many  thousand  men  :  but  if  your  Woolwich  grapeshot  be  but 
eclipsing  Divine  Justice,  and  the  God's-radiance  itself  gleam 
recognisable  athwart  such  grapeshot,  — then,  yes  then  is  the  time 
come  for  fighting  and  attacking.  All  artillery -parks  have  become 
weak,  and  are  about  to  dissipate  :  in  the  God's-thunder,  their  poor 
thunder  slackens,  ceases  ;  finding  that  it  is,  in  all  senses  of  the 
term,  a  brute  one  !  — 

That  the  Manchester  Insurrection  stood  still,  on  the  streets, 
with  an  indisposition  to  fire  and  bloodshed,  was  wisdom  for  it  even 
as  an  Insurrection.  Insurrection,  never  so  necessary,  is  a  most 
sad  necessity  ;  and  governors  who  wait  for  that  to  instruct  them, 
are  surely  getting  into  the  fatallest  courses, — proving  themselves 
Sons  of  Nox  and  Chaos,  of  blind  Cowardice,  not  of  seeing  Val- 
our !  How  can  there  be  any  remedy  in  insurrection  1  It  is  a  mere 
announcement  of  the  disease,  —  visible  now  even  to  Sons  of 
Night.  Insurrection  usually  '  gains  '  little  ;  usually  wastes  how 
much  !  One  of  its  worst  kinds  of  waste,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
rest,  is  that  of  irritating  and  exasperating  men  against  each  other, 
by  violence  done  ;  which  is  always  sure  to  be  injustice  done,  for 
violence  does  even  justice  unjustly. 

Who  shall  compute  the  waste  and  loss,  the  obstruction  of  every 
sort,  that  was  produced  in  the  Manchester  region  by  Peterloo 
alone  !  Some  thirteen  unarmed  men  and  women  cut  down,  —  the 
number  of  the  slain  and  maimed  is  very  countable  :  but  the 
treasury  of  rage,  burning  hidden  or  visible  in  all  hearts  ever  since, 
more  or  less  perverting  the  effort  and  aim  of  all  hearts  ever  since, 
is  of  unknown  extent.  "  How  ye  came  among  us,  in  your  cruel 
armed  blindness,  ye  unspeakable  County  Yeomanry,  sabres  flour- 


16  PROEM. 

rishing,  hoofs  prancing,  and  slashed  us  down  at  your  brute 
pleasure  ;  deaf,  blind  to  all  our  claims  and  woes  and  wrongs ;  of 
quick  sight  and  sense  to  your  own  claims  only  !  There  lie  poor 
sallow  workworn  weavers,  and  complain  no  more  now  ;  women 
themselves  are  slashed  and  sabred,  howling  terror  fills  the  air ; 
and  ye  ride  prosperous,  very  victorious,  —  ye  unspeakable:  give 
us  sabres  too,  and  then  come-on  a  little  !  "  Such  are  Peterloos. 
In  all  hearts  that  witnessed  Peterloo,  stands  written,  as  in  fire- 
characters,  or  smoke-characters  prompt  to  become  fire  again,  a 
legible  balance-account  of  grim  vengeance ;  very  unjustly  balan- 
ced, much  exaggerated,  as  is  the  way  with  such  accounts  ;  but 
payable  readily  at  sight,  in  full  with  compound  interest !  Such 
things  should  be  avoided  as  the  very  pestilence.  For  men's 
hearts  ought  not  to  be  set  against  one  another  ;  but  set  with  one 
another,  and  all  against  the  Evil  Thing  only.  Men's  souls  ought 
to  be  left  to  see  clearly  ;  not  jaundiced,  blinded,  twisted  all  awry, 
by  revenge,  mutual  abhorrence,  and  the  like.  An  Insurrection 
that  can  announce  the  disease,  and  then  retire  with  no  such 
balance-account  opened  anywhere,  has  attained  the  highest  suc- 
cess possible  for  it. 

And  this  was  wThat  these  poor  Manchester  operatives,  with  all 
the  darkness  that  was  in  them  and  round  them,  did  manage  to 
perform.  They  put  their  huge  inarticulate  question,  "  What  do 
you  mean  to  do  with  us  1  "  in  a  manner  audible  to  every  reflective 
soul  in  this  kingdom ;  exciting  deep  pity  in  all  good  men,  deep 
anxiety  in  all  men  whatever  ;  and  no  conflagration  or  outburst  of 
madness  came  to  cloud  that  feeling  anywhere,  but  everywhere  it 
operates  unclouded.  All  England  heard  the  question :  it  is  the 
first  practical  form  of  our  Sphinx-riddle.  England  will  answer 
it ;  or,  on  the  whole,  England  will  perish  ;  —  one  does  not  yet  ex- 
pect the  latter  result ! 

For  the  rest,  that  the  Manchester  Insurrection  could  yet  discern 
no  radiance  of  Heaven  on  any  side  of  its  horizon  ;  but  feared  that 
all  lights,  of  the  O'Connor  or  other  sorts,  hitherto  kindled,  were 
but  deceptive  fish-oil  transparencies,  or  bog  will-o'-wisp  lights, 
and  no  dayspring  from  on  high  :  for  this  also  we  will  honor  the 
poor  Manchester  Insurrection,  and  augur  well  of  it.  A  deep  un- 
spoken sense  lies  in  these  strong  men, — inconsiderable,  almost 


MANCHESTER  INSURRECTION.  17 

stupid,  as  all  they  can  articulate  of  it  is.  Amid  all  violent  stupid- 
ity of  speech,  a  right  noble  instinct  of  what  is  doable  and  what  is 
not  doable  never  forsakes  them :  the  strong  inarticulate  men  and 
workers,  whom  Fact  patronises  ;  of  whom,  in  all  difficulty  and 
work  whatsoever,  there  is  good  augury  !  This  work  too  is  to  be 
done :  Governors  and  Governing  Classes  that  can  articulate  and 
utter,  in  any  measure,  what  the  law  of  Fact  and  Justice  is,  may 
calculate  that  here  is  a  Governed  Class  who  will  listen. 

And  truly  this  first  practical  form  of  the  Sphinx-question,  inar- 
ticulately and  so  audibly  put  there,  is  one  of  the  most  impressive 
ever  asked  in  the  world.  "  Behold  us  here,  so  many  thousands, 
millions,  and  increasing  at  the  rate  of  fifty  every  hour.  We  are 
right  willing  and  able  to  work  ;  and  on  the  Planet  Earth  is  plenty 
of  work  and  wages  for  a  million  times  as  many.  We  ask,  If  you 
mean  to  lead  us  towards  work;  to  try  to  lead  us, — by  ways 
new,  never  yet  heard  of  till  this  new  unheard-of  Time  ?  Or  if 
you  declare  that  you  cannot  lead  us  1  And  expect  that  we  are  to 
remain  quietly  unled,  and  in  a  composed  manner  perish  of  starva- 
tion 1  What  is  it  you  expect  of  us  1  What  is  it  you  mean  to  do 
with  us?"  This  question,  I  say,  has  been  put  in  the  hearing  of 
all  Britain;  and  will  be  again  put,  and  ever  again,  till  some 
answer  be  given  it. 

Unhappy  Workers,  unhappier  Idlers,  unhappy  men  and  women 
of  this  actual  England !  We  are  yet  very  far  from  an  answer, 
and  there  will  be  no  existence  for  us  without  finding  one.  "  A 
fair  day's- wages  for  a  fair  day's -work  :"  it  is  as  just  a  demand  as 
Governed  men  ever  made  of  Governing.  It  is  the  everlasting 
right  of  man.  Indisputable  as  Gospels,  as  arithmetical  multipli- 
cation-tables :  it  must  and  will  have  itself  fulfilled  ;  —  and  yet,  in 
these  times  of  ours,  with  what  enormous  difficulty,  next-door  to 
impossibility !  For  the  times  are  really  strange  ;  of  a  complexity- 
intricate  with  all  the  new  width  of  the  ever-widening  world  ;  times 
here  of  half-frantic  velocity  of  impetus,  there  of  the  deadest-look- 
ing stillness  and  paralysis ;  times  definable  as  shewing  two  quali- 
ties, Dilettantism  and  Mammonism  ;  —  most  intricate  obstructed 
times  !  Nay,  if  there  were  not  a  Heaven's  radiance  of  Justice, 
prophetic,  clearly  of  Heaven,  discernible  behind  all  these  confused 
world-wide  entanglements,  of  Landlord  interests,  Manufacturing 


13 


interests,  Tory-Whig  interests,  and  who  knows  what  other  in- 
terests, expediencies,  vested  interesls,  established  possessions, 
inveterate  Dilettantisms,  Midas-eared  Mammonisms, —  it  would 
seem  to  every  one  a  flat  impossibility,  which  all  wise  men  might 
as  well  at  once  abandon.  If  you  do  not  know  eternal  Justice  from 
momentary  Expediency,  and  understand  in  your  heart  of  hearts 
how  Justice,  radiant,  beneficent,  as  the  all-victorious  Light-ele- 
ment, is  also  in  essence,  if  need  be,  an  all-victorious  Fire-e\ement, 
and  melts  all  manner  of  vested  interests,  and  the  hardest  iron 
cannon,  as  if  they  were  soft  wax,  and  does  ever  in  the  long-run 
rule  and  reign,  and  allows  nothing  else  to  rule  and  reign,  —  you 
also  would  talk  of  impossibility  !  But  it  is  only  difficult,  it  is  not 
impossible.  Possible?  It  is,  with  whatever  difficulty,  very  clearly 
inevitable. 

Fair  day's-wages  for  fair  day's-work  !  exclaims  a  sarcastic 
man  :  alas,  in  what  corner  of  this  Planet,  since  Adam  first  awoke 
on  it,  was  that  ever  realised  ?  The  day's-wages  of  John  Milton's 
day's-work,  named  Paradise  Lost  and  Milton's  Works,  were  Ten 
Pounds  paid  by  instalments,  and  a  rather  close  escape  from  death 
on  the  gallows.  Consider  that  :  it  is  no  rhetorical  flourish  ;  it  is 
an  authentic,  altogether  quiet  fact,  —  emblematic,  quietly  docu- 
mentary of  a  whole  world  of  such,  ever  since  human  history  be- 
gan. Oliver  Cromwell  quitted  his  farming  ;  undertook  a  Hercu- 
les' Labour  and  lifelong  wrestle  with  that  Lernean  Hydra-coil, 
wide  as  England,  hissing  heaven-high  through  its  thousand 
crowned,  coroneted,  shovel-hatted  quackheads  ;  and  he  did  wres- 
tle with  it,  the  truest  and  terriblest  wrestle  I  have  heard  of;  and 
he  wrestled  it,  and  mowed  and  cut  it  down  a  good  many  stages, 
so  that  its  hissing  is  ever  since  pitiful  in  comparison,  and  one  can 
walk  abroad  in  comparative  peace  from  it ; —  and  his  wages,  as  I 
understand,  were  burial  under  the  gallows-tree  near  Tyburn 
Turnpike,  with  his  head  on  the  gable  of  Westminster  Hall,  and 
two  centuries  now  of  mixed  cursing  and  ridicule  from  all  manner 
of  men.  His  dust  lies  under  the  Edgeware  Road,  near  Tyburn 
Turnpike,  at  this  hour  ;  and  his  memory  is  — Nay,  what  matters 
what  his  memory  is  ?  His  memory,  at  bottom,  is  or  yet  shall  be 
as  that  of  a  god  :  a  terror  and  horror  to  all  quacks  and  cowards 


MANCHESTER  INSURRECTION.  19 

and  insincere  persons  ;  an  everlasting  encouragement,  new  me- 
mento, battleword,  and  pledge  of  victory  to  all  the  brave.  It  is 
the  natural  course  and  history  of  the  Godlike,  in  every  place,  in 
every  time.  What  god  ever  carried  it  with  the  Tenpound  Fran- 
chisers ;  in  open  Vestry,  or  with  any  Sanhedrim  of  considerable 
standing?  When  was  a  god  found  '  agreeable'  to  everybody? 
The  regular  way  is  to  hang,  kill,  crucify  your  gods,  and  execrate 
and  trample  them  under  your  stupid  hoofs  for  a  century  or  two  ; 
till  you  discover  that  they  are  gods,  —  and  then  take  to  braying 
over  them,  still  in  a  very  long-eared  manner  !  —  So  speaks  the 
sarcastic  man  ;  in  his  wild  way,  very  mournful  truths. 

Day's-wages  for  day's-work  1  continues  he  :  The  Progress  of 
Human  Society  consists  even  in  this  same,  The  better  and  better 
apportioning  of  wages  to  work.  Give  me  this,  you  have  given 
me  all.  Pay  to  every  man  accurately  what  he  has  worked  for, 
what  he  has  earned  and  done  and  deserved,  —  to  this  man  broad 
lands  and  honours,  to  that  man  high  gibbets  and  treadmills  :  what 
more  have  I  to  ask  ?  Heaven's  Kingdom,  which  we  daily  pray 
for,  has  come  ;  God's  will  is  done  on  Earth  even  as  it  is  in 
Heaven  !  This  is  the  radiance  of  celestial  Justice  ;  in  the  light 
or  in  the  fire  of  which  all  impediments,  vested  interests,  and  iron 
cannon,  are  more  and  more  melting  like  wax,  and  disappearing 
from  the  pathways  of  men.  A  thing  ever  struggling  forward  ; 
irrepressible,  advancing  inevitable  ;  perfecting  itself,  all  days, 
more  and  more,  — never  to  be  perfect  till  that  general  Doomsday, 
the  ultimate  Consummation,  and  Last  of  earthly  Days. 

True,  as  to  '  perfection  '  and  so  foith,  answer  we  ;  true 
enough  !  And  yet  withal  we  have  to  remark,  that  imperfect  Hu- 
man Society  holds  itself  together,  and  finds  place  under  the  Sun, 
in  virtue  simply  of  some  approximation  to  perfection  being  actually 
made  and  put  in  practice.  We  remark  farther,  that  there  are 
supportable  approximations,  and  then  likewise  insupportable. 
With  some,  almost  with  any,  supportable  approximation  men  are 
apt,  perhaps  too  apt,  to  rest  indolently  patient,  and  say,  It  will  do. 
Thus  these  poor  Manchester  manual  workers  mean  only,  by  day's- 
wages  for  day's-work,  certain  coins  of  money  adequate  to  keep 
them  living  ;  —  in  return  for  their  work,  such  modicum  of  food, 
clothes  and  fuel  as  will  enable  them  to  continue  their  work  itself ! 


20  PROEM. 

They  as  yet  clamour  for  no  more  ;  the  rest,  still  inarticulate,  can- 
not yet  shape  itself  into  a  demand  at  all,  and  only  lies  in  them  as 
a  dumb  wish ;  perhaps  only,  still  more  inarticulate,  as  a  dumb, 
altogether  unconscious  want.  This  is  the  supportable  approxi- 
mation they  would  rest  patient  with,  That  by  their  work  they 
might  be  kept  alive  to  work  more  !  —  This  once  grown  unattaina- 
ble, I  think,  your  approximation  may  consider  itself  to  have 
reached  the  insupportable  stage  ;  and  may  prepare,  with  what- 
ever difficulty,  reluctance  and  astonishment,  for  one  of  two  things, 
for  changing  or  perishing  !  With  the  millions  no  longer  able  to 
live,  how  can  the  units  keep  living?  It  is  too  clear  the  Nation 
itself  is  on  the  way  to  suicidal  death. 

Shall  we  say  then,  The  world  has  retrograded  in  its  talent  of 
apportioning  wages  to  work,  in  late  days'?  The  world  had 
always  a  talent  of  that  sort,  better  or  worse.  Time  was  when 
the  mere  Aa/irfworker  needed  not  announce  his  claim  to  the  world 
by  Manchester  Insurrections  !  —  The  world,  with  its  Wealth  of 
Nations,  Supply-and-demand  and  such  like,  has  of  late  days  been 
terribly  inattentive  to  that  question  of  work  and  wages.  We  will 
not  say,  the  poor  world  has  retrograded  even  here  :  we  will  say 
rather,  the  world  has  been  rushing  on  with  such  fiery  animation 
to  get  work  and  ever  more  work  done,  it  has  had  no  time  to  think 
of  dividing  the  wages  ;  and  has  merely  left  them  to  be  scrambled 
for  by  the  Law  of  the  Stronger,  law  of  Supply-and-demand,  law 
of  Laissez-faire,  and  other  idle  Laws  and  Un-laws,  —  saying,  in 
its  dire  haste  to  get  the  work  done,  That  is  well  enough  ! 

And  now  the  world  will  have  to  pause  a  little,  and  take  up  that 
other  side  of  the  problem,  and  in  right  earnest  strive  for  some  so- 
lution of  that.  For  it  has  become  pressing.  What  is  the  use  of 
your  spun  shirts  ?  They  hang  there  by  the  million  unsaleable  ; 
and  here,  by  the  million,  are  diligent  bare  backs  that  can  get  no 
hold  of  them.  Shirts" are  useful  for  covering  human  backs  ;  use- 
less otherwise,  an  unbearable  mockery  otherwise.  You  have 
fallen  terribly  behind  with  that  side  of  the  problem  !  Manchester 
Insurrections,  French  Revolutions,  and  thousandfold  phenomena 
great  and  small,  announce  loudly  that  you  must  bring  it  forward 
a  little  again.  Never  till  now,  in  the  history  of  an  Earth  which 
to  this  hour  nowhere  refuses  to  grow  corn  if  you  will  plough  it, 


MANCHESTER  INSURRECTION.  21 

to  yield  shirts  if  you  will  spin  and  weave  in  it,  did  the  mere  man- 
ual two-handed  worker  (however  it  might  fare  with  other  work- 
ers) cry  in  vain  for  such  '  wages '  as  he  means  by  '  fair  wages,' 
namely  food  and  warmth  !  The  Godlike  could  not  and  cannot  be 
paid  ;  but  the  Earthly  always  could.  Gurth,  a  mere  swineherd, 
born  thrall  of  Cedric  the  Saxon,  tended  pigs  in  the  wood,  and  did 
get  some  parings  of  the  pork.  Why,  the  four-footed  worker  has 
already  got  all  that  this  two-handed  one  is  clamouring  for  !  How 
often  must  I  remind  you?  There  is  not  a  horse  in  England,  able 
and  willing  to  work,  but  has  due  food  and  lodging  ;  and  goes 
about  sleek-coated,  satisfied  in  heart.  And  you  say,  It  is  impos- 
sible. Brothers,  I  answer,  if  for  you  it  be  impossible,  what  is  to 
become  of  you  ?  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  believe  it  to  be  impos- 
sible. The  human  brain,  looking  at  these  sleek  English  horses, 
refuses  to  believe  in  such  impossibility  for  English  men.  Do  you 
depart  quickly  ;  clear  the  ways  soon,  lest  worse  befal.  We  for 
our  share  do  purpose,  with  full  view  of  the  enormous  difficulty, 
with  total  disbelief  in  the  impossibility,  to  endeavour  while  life  is 
in  us,  and  to  die  endeavouring,  we  and  our  sons,  till  we  attain  it 
or  have  all  died  and  ended. 

Such  a  Platitude  of  a  World,  in  which  all  working  horses 
could  be  well  fed,  and  innumerable  working  men  should  die 
starved,  were  it  not  best  to  end  it ;  to  have  done  with  it,  and  re- 
store it  once  for  all  to  the  Jotuns,  Mud-giants,  Frost-giants  and 
Chaotic  Brute-gods  of  the  Beginning  1  For  the  old  Anarchic 
Brute-gods  it  may  be  well  enough  ;  but  it  is  a  Platitude  which 
Men  should  be  above  countenancing  by  their  presence  in  it.  We 
pray  you ,  let  the  word  impossible  disappear  from  your  vocabulary 
in  this  matter.  It  is  an  awful  omen  ;  to  all  of  us,  and  to  your- 
selves first  of  all. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

Morrison's  pill. 

What  is  to  be  done,  what  would  you  have  us  do  1  asks  many  a 
one,  with  a  tone  of  impatience,  almost  of  reproach  ;  and  then,  if 
you  mention  some  one  thing,  some  two  things,  twenty  things  that 
might  be  done,  turns  round  with  a  satirical  tehee,  and,  "These 
are  your  remedies  !  ' '  The  state  of  mind  indicated  by  such  ques- 
tion, and  such  rejoinder,  is  worth  reflecting  on. 

It  seems  to  be  taken  for  granted,  by  these  interrogative  philoso- 
phers, that  there  is  some  'thing,'  or  handful  of  '  things,'  which 
could  be  done,;  some  Act  of  Parliament,  '  remedial  measure  '  or 
the  like,  which  could  be  passed,  whereby  the  social  malady  were 
fairly  fronted,  conquered,  put  an  end  to  ;  so  that,  with  your  reme- 
dial measure  in  your  pocket,  you  could  then  go  on  triumphant, 
and  be  troubled  no  farther.  "  You  tell  us  the  evil,"  cry  such 
persons,  as  if  justly  aggrieved,  "  and  do  not  tell  us  how  it  is  to 
be  cured  !  " 

How  it  is  to  be  cured  1  Brothers,  I  am  sorry  I  have  got  no 
Morrison's  Pill  for  curing  the  maladies  of  Society.  It  were  infi- 
nitely handier  if  we  had  a  Morrison's  Pill,  Act  of  Parliament,  or 
remedial  measure,  which  men  could  swallow,  one  good  time,  and 
then  go  on  in  their  old  courses,  cleared  from  all  miseries  and  mis- 
chiefs !  Unluckily  we  have  none  such  ;  unluckily  the  Heavens 
themselves,  in  their  rich  pharmacopoeia,  contain  none  such.  There 
will  no  '  thing  '  be  done  that  will  cure  you.  There  will  a  radical 
universal  alteration  of  your  regimen  and  way  of  life  take  place  ; 
there  will  a  most  agonizing  divorce  between  you  and  your  chime- 
ras, luxuries  and  falsities,  take  place  ;  a  most  toilsome,  all  but  '  im- 
possible '  return  to  Nature,  and  her  veracities,  and  her  integrities, 
take  place  :  that  so  the  inner  fountains  of  life  may  again  begin, 


Morrison's  pill.  23 

like  eternal  Light-fountains,  to  irradiate  and  purify  your  bloated, 
swollen,  foul  existence,  drawing  nigh,  as  at  present,  to  nameless 
death !  Either  death  or  else  all  this  will  take  place.  Judge  if, 
with  such  diagnosis,  any  Morrison's  Pill  is  like  to  be  discover- 
able ! 

But  the  Life-fountain  within  you  once  again  set  flowing,  what 
innumerable  '  things,'  whole  sets  and  classes  and  continents  of 
'  things,'  year  after  year,  and  decade  after  decade,  and  century 
after  century,  will  then  be  doable  and  done !  Not  Emigration, 
Education,  Corn-Law  Abrogation,  Sanitary  Regulation,  Land 
Property-Tax  ;  not  these  alone,  nor  a  thousand  times  as  much  as 
these.  Good  Heavens,  there  will  then  be  light  in  the  inner  heart 
of  here  and  there  a  man,  to  discern  what  is  just,  what  is  com- 
manded by  the  Most  High  God,  what  must  be  done,  were  it  never 
so  '  impossible.'  Vain  jargon  in  favour  of  the  palpably  unjust 
will  then  abridge  itself  within  limits.  Vain  jargon,  on  Hustings, 
in  Parliaments  or  wherever  else,  when  here  and  there  a  man  has 
vision  for  the  essential  God's-Truth  of  the  things  jargoned  of,  will 
become  very  vain  indeed.  The  silence  of  here  and  there  such  a 
man,  how  eloquent  in  answer  to  such  jargon  !  Such  jargon, 
frightened  at  its  own  gaunt  echo,  will  unspeakably  abate  ;  nay, 
for  awhile,  may  almost  in  a  manner  disappear,  —  the  wise  an- 
swering it  in  silence,  and  even  the  simple  taking  cue  from  them 
to  hoot  it  down  wherever  heard.  It  will  be  a  blessed  time  ;  and 
many  'things'  will  become  doable,  —  and  when  the  brains  are 
out,  an  absurdity  will  die  1  Not  easily  again  shall  a  Corn-Law 
argue  ten  years  for  itself;  and  still  talk  and  argue,  when  impartial 
persons  have  to  say  with  a  sigh  that,  for  so  long  back,  they  have 
heard  no  '  argument '  advanced  for  it  but  such  as  might  make  the 
angels  and  almost  the  very  jackasses  weep  !  — 

Wholly  a  blessed  time  :  when  jargon  might  abate,  and  here 
and  there  some  genuine  speech  begin.  When  to  the  noble  opened 
heart,  as  to  such  heart  they  alone  do,  all  noble  things  began  to 
grow  visible  ;  and  the  difference  between  just  and  unjust,  between 
true  and  false,  between  work  and  sham-work,  between  speech  and 
jargon,  was  once  more,  what  to  our  happier  Fathers  it  used  to  be, 
infinite,  —  as  between  a  Heavenly  thing  and  an  Infernal :  the  one 
a  thing  which  you  were  not  to  do,  which  you  were  wise  not  to 


24  PROEM. 

attempt  doing  ;  which  it  were  better  for  you  to  have  a  millstone 
tied  round  your  neck,  and  be  cast  into  the  sea,  than  concern  your- 
self with  doing  !  — Brothers,  it  will  not  be  a  Morrison's  Pill,  or 
remedial  measure,  that  will  bring  all  this  about  for  us. 

And  yet,  very  literally,  till,  in  some  shape  or  other,  it  be  brought 
about,  we  remain  cureless  ;  till  it  begin  to  be  brought  about,  the 
cure  does  not  begin.  For  Nature  and  Fact,  not  Redtape  and 
Semblance,  are  to  this  hour  the  basis  of  man's  life  ;  and  on  those, 
through  never  such  strata  of  these,  man  and  his  life  and  all  his 
interests  do,  sooner  or  later,  infallibly  come  to  rest,  —  and  to  be 
supported  or  be  swallowed  according  as  they  agree  with  those. 
The  question  is  asked  of  them,  not,  How  do  you  agree  with 
Downing-street  and  accredited  Semblance  ?  but,  How  do  you 
agree  with  God's  Universe  and  the  actual  Reality  of  things  ? 
This  Universe  has  its  Laws.  If  we  walk  according  to  the  Law, 
the  Law-Maker  will  befriend  us  ;  if  not,  not.  Alas,  by  no  Re- 
form Bill,  Ballot-box,  Five-point  Charter,  by  no  boxes  or  bills 
or  charters,  can  you  perform  this  alchemy  :  '  Given  a  world  of 
Knaves  to  produce  an  Honesty  from  their  united  action  !  '  It  is  a 
distillation,  once  for  all,  not  possible.  You  pass  it  through  alem- 
bic after  alembic,  it  comes  out  still  a  Dishonesty,  with  a  new  dress 
on  it,  a  new  colour  to  it.  '  While  we  ourselves  continue  valets, 
how  can  any  hero  come  to  govern  us  1  '  We  are  governed,  very 
infallibly,  by  the  'sham-hero,'  —  whose  name  is  Quack,  whose 
work  and  governance  is  Plausibility,  and  also  is  Falsity  and 
Fatuity  ;  to  which  Nature  says,  and  must  say  when  it  comes  to 
her  to  speak,  eternally  No  !  Nations  cease  to  be  befriended  of 
the  Law-Maker,  when  they  walk  not  according  to  the  Law.  The 
Sphinx-question  remains  unsolved  by  them,  becomes  ever  more 
insoluble. 

If  thou  ask  again,  therefore,  on  the  Morrison 's-Pill  hypothesis, 
What  is  to  be  done  1  allow  me  to  reply  :  By  thee,  for  the  present, 
almost  nothing.  Thou  there,  the  thing  for  thee  to  do  is,  if  possi- 
ble, to  cease  to  be  a  hollow  sounding-shell  of  hearsays,  egoisms, 
purblind  dilettantisms ;  and  become,  were  it  on  the  infinitely 
small  scale,  a  faithful  discerning  soul.  Thou  shalt  descend  into 
thy  inner  man,  and  see  if  there  be  any  traces  of  a  soul  there  ;  till 


Morrison's   pills.  25 

then  there  can  be  nothing  done  !  0  brother,  we  must  if  possible 
resuscitate  some  soul  and  conscience  in  us,  exchange  our  dilet- 
tantisms for  sincerities,  our  dead  hearts  of  stone  for  living  hearts 
of  flesh.  Then  shall  we  discern,  not  one  thing,  but  in  clearer  or 
dimmer  sequence,  a  whole  endless  host  of  things  that  can  be  done. 
Do  the  first  of  these  ;  do  it ;  the  second  will  already  have  become 
clearer,  doabler  ;  the  second,  third  and  three-thousandth  will  then 
have  begun  to  be  possible  for  us.  Not  any  universal  Morrison's 
Pill  shall  we  then,  either  as  swallowers  or  as  venders,  ask  after  at 
all ;  but  a  far  different  sort  of  remedies  :  Quacks  shall  no  more 
have  dominion  over  us,  but  true  Heroes  and  Healers  ! 

Will  not  that  be  a  thing  worthy  of  'doing;'  to  deliver  our- 
selves from  quacks,  sham-heroes ;  to  deliver  the  whole  world 
more  and  more  from  such  ?  They  are  the  one  bane  of  the  world. 
Once  clear  the  world  of  them,  it  ceases  to  be  a  Devil's-world,  in 
all  fibres  of  it  wretched,  accursed;  and  begins  to  be  a  God's- 
world,  blessed,  and  working  hourly  towards  blessedness.  Thou 
for  one  wilt  not  again  vote  for  any  quack,  do  honour  to  any  edge- 
gilt  vacuity  in  man's  shape  :  cant  shall  be  known  to  thee  by  the 
sound  of  it ;  —  thou  wilt  fly  from  cant  with  a  shudder  never  felt 
before  ;  as  from  the  opened  litany  of  Sorcerers'  Sabbaths,  the 
true  Devil-worship  of  this  age,  more  horrible  than  any  other  blas- 
phemy, profanity  or  genuine  blackguardism  elsewhere  audible 
among  men.  It  is  alarming  to  witness,  — in  its  present  completed 
state  !  And  Quack  and  Dupe,  as  we  must  ever  keep  in  mind, 
are  upper-side  and  under  of  the  selfsame  substance  ;  convertible 
personages  ;  turn  up  your  dupe  into  the  proper  fostering  element, 
and  he  himself  can  become  a  quack  ;  there  is  in  him  the  due 
prurient  insincerity,  open  voracity  for  profit,  and  closed  sense  for 
truth,  whereof  quacks  too,  in  all  their  kinds,  are  made. 

Alas,  it  is  not  to  the  hero,  it  is  to  the  sham-hero  that,  of  right 
and  necessity,  the  valet-world  belongs.  '  What  is  to  be  done  ? ' 
The  reader  sees  whether  it  is  like  to  be  the  seeking  and  swallow- 
ing of  some  '  remedial  measure  ! ' 


CHAPTER  V. 


ARISTOCRACY    OF    TALENT. 


When  an  individual  is  miserable,  what  does  it  most  of  all  behove 
him  to  do  ?  To  complain  of  this  man  or  of  that,  of  this  thing  or 
of  that  ?  To  fill  the  world  and  the  street  with  lamentation,  objur- 
gation'? Not  so  at  all ;  the  reverse  of  so.  All  moralists  advise 
him  not  to  complain  of  any  person  or  of  any  thing,  but  of  him- 
self only.  He  is  to  know  of  a  truth  that  being  miserable  he  has 
been  unwise,  he.  Had  he  faithfully  followed  Nature  and  her 
Laws,  Nature,  ever  true  to  her  Laws,  would  have  yielded  fruit 
and  increase  and  felicity  to  him  :  but  he  has  followed  other  than 
Nature's  Laws  ;  and  now  Nature,  her  patience  with  him  being 
ended,  leaves  him  desolate  ;  answers  with  very  emphatic  signi- 
ficance to  him  :  No.  Not  by  this  road,  my  son  ;  by  another  road 
shalt  thou  attain  well-being  :  this,  thou  perceivest  is  the  road  to 
ill-being  ;  quit  this  !  —  So  do  all  moralists  advise  :  that  the  man 
penitently  say  to  himself  first  of  all,  Behold  I  was  not  wise 
enough  ;  I  quitted  the  laws  of  Fact,  which  are  also  called  the 
Laws  of  God,  and  mistook  for  them  the  laws  of  Sham  and  Sem- 
blance, which  are  called  the  Devil's  Laws  ;  therefore  am  I  here  ! 
Neither  with  Nations  that  become  miserable  is  it  fundamentally 
otherwise.  The  ancient  guides  of  Nations,  Prophets,  Priests,  or 
whatever  their  name,  were  well  aware  of  this  ;  and,  down  to  a 
late  epoch,  impressively  taught  and  inculcated  it.  The  modern 
guides  of  Nations,  who  also  go  under  a  great  variety  of  names, 
Journalists,  Political  Economists,  Politicians,  Pamphleteers,  have 
entirely  forgotten  this,  and  are  ready  to  deny  this.  But  it  never- 
theless remains  eternally  undeniable  :  nor  is  there  any  doubt  but 
we  shall  all  be  taught  it  yet,  and  made  again  to  confess  it :  we 
shall  all  be  striped  and  scourged  till  we  do  learn  it ;  and  shall  at 


ARISTOCRACY    OF    TALENT.  27 

last  either  get  to  know  it,  or  be  striped  to  death  in  the  process. 
For  it  is  undeniable  !  When  a  Nation  is  unhappy,  the  old  Prophet 
was  right  and  not  wrong  in  saying  to  it :  Ye  have  forgotten  God, 
ye  have  quitted  the  ways  of  God,  or  ye  would  not  have  been  un- 
happy. It  is  not  according  to  the  laws  of  Fact  that  ye  have  lived 
and  guided  yourselves,  but  according  to  the  laws  of  Delusion, 
Imposture,  and  wilful  and  unwilful  Mistake  of  Fact ;  behold  there- 
fore the  Unveracity  is  worn  out ;  Nature's  long-suffering  with  you 
is  exhausted  ;  and  ye  are  here  ! 

Surely  there  is  nothing  very  inconceivable  in  this,  even  to  the 
Journalist,  to  the  Political  Economist,  Modern  Pamphleteer,  or 
any  two-legged  animal  without  feathers  !  If  a  country  finds  itself 
wretched,  sure  enough  that  country  has  been  misguided  :  it  is 
with  the  wretched  Twenty-seven  Millions,  fallen  wretched,  as 
with  the  Unit  fallen  wretched  :  they  as  he  have  quitted  the  course 
prescribed  by  Nature  and  the  Supreme  Powers,  and  so  are  fallen 
into  scarcity,  disaster,  infelicity  ;  and  pausing  to  consider  them- 
selves, have  to  lament  and  say,  Alas,  we  were  not  wise  enough. 
We  took  transient  superficial  Semblance  for  everlasting  central 
Substance ;  we  have  departed  far  away  from  the  Laws  of  this 
Universe,  and  behold  now  lawless  Chaos  and  inane  Chimera  is 
ready  to  devour  us  !  —  '  Nature  in  late  centuries,'  says  Sauerteig, 
'  was  universally  supposed  to  be  dead  ;  an  old  eight-day  clock, 
'  made  many  thousand  years  ago,  and  still  ticking,  but  dead  as 
'  brass,  —  which  the  Maker,  at  most,  sat  looking  at,  in  a  distant, 
'  singular,  and  indeed  incredible  manner  :  but  now  I  am  happy  to 
'  observe,  she  is  everywhere  asserting  herself  to  be  not  dead  and 
1  brass  at  all,  but  alive  and  miraculous,  celestial-infernal,  with  an 
1  emphasis  that  will  again  penetrate  the  thickest  head  of  this 
'  Planet  by  and  by  !  ' 

Indisputable  enough  to  all  mortals  now,  the  guidance  of  this 
country  has  not  been  sufficiently  wise  :  men  too  foolish  have  been 
set  to  the  guiding  and  governing  of  it,  and  have  guided  it  hither  ; 
we  must  find  wiser,  — wiser,  or  else  we  perish  !  To  this  length 
of  insight  all  England  has  now  advanced ;  but  as  yet  no  farther. 
All  England  stands  wringing  its  hands,  asking  itself,  nigh 
desperate,  What  farther  1  Reform  Bill  proves  to  be  a  failure  ; 
Benthamee  Radicalism,  the  gospel  of  '  Enlightened  Selfishness,' 


dies  out,  or  dwindles  into  Five-point  Chartism,  amid  the  tears  and 
hootings  of  men  :  what  next  are  we  to  hope  or  try?  Five-point 
Charter,  Free-trade  ;  Church-extension,  Sliding-scale  ;  what,  in 
Heaven's  name,  are  we  next  to  attempt,  that  we  sink  not  in  inane 
Chimera,  and  be  devoured  of  Chaos  ?  —  The  case  is  pressing,  and 
one  of  the  most  complicated  in  the  world.  A  God's-message 
never  came  to  thicker-skinned  people  ;  never  had  a  God's-mes- 
sage to  pierce  through  thicker  integuments,  into  heavier  ears.  It 
is  Fact,  speaking  once  more,  in  miraculous  thunder-voice,  from 
out  of  the  centre  of  the  world  ; — how  unknown  its  language  to 
the  deaf  and  foolish  many  ;  how  distinct,  undeniable,  terrible  and 
yet  beneficent,  to  the  hearing  few  :  Behold,  ye  shall  grow  wiser, 
or  ye  shall  die  !  Truer  to  Nature's  Fact,  or  inane  Chimera  will 
swallow  you  ;  in  whirlwinds  of  fire,  you  and  your  Mammonisms, 
Dilettantisms,  your  Midas-eared  philosophies,  double-barrelled 
Aristocracies,  shall  disappear  ! — Such  is  the  God's-message  to 
us,  once  more,  in  these  modern  days. 

We  must  have  more  Wisdom  to  govern  us,  we  must  be  gov- 
erned by  the  Wisest,  wTe  must  have  an  Aristocracy  of  Talent ! 
cry  many.  True,  most  true  ;  but  how  to  get  if?  The  following 
extract  from  our  young  friend  of  the  Houndsditch  Indicator  is 
worth  perusing  :  '  At  this  time,'  says  he,  '  while  there  is  a  cry 
'  everywhere,  articulate  or  inarticulate,  for  an  "  Aristocracy  of 
'  Talent,"  a  Governing  Class  namely  which  did  govern,  not  mere- 
'  ly  which  took  the  wages  of  governing,  and  could  not  with  all 
'  our  industry  be  kept  from  misgoverning,  corn-lawing,  and  play- 
•  ing  the  very  deuce  with  us, — it  may  not  be  altogether  useless 
'  to  remind  some  of  the  greener-headed  sort  what  a  dreadfully 
'  difficult  affair  the  getting  of  such  an  Aristocracy  is  !  Do  you 
1  expect,  my  friends,  that  your  indispensable  Aristocracy  of  Talent 
'  is  to  be  enlisted  straightway,  by  some  sort  of  recruitment  afore- 
'  thought,  out  of  the  general  population  ;  arranged  in  supreme 
'  regimental  order  ;  and  set  to  rule  over  us  1  That  it  will  be  got 
;  sifted,  like  wheat  out  of  chaff,  from  the  Twenty-seven  Million 
1  British  subjects  ;  that  any  Ballot-box,  Reform  Bill,  or  other  Po- 
4  litical  Machine,  with  Force  of  Public  Opinion  never  so  active  on 
1  it,  is  likely  to  perform  said  process  of  sifting  1    Would  to  Heaven 


ARISTOCRACY    OF    TALENT.  29 

e  that  we  had  a  sieve  ;  that  we  could  so  much  as  fancy  any  kind 
'  of  sieve,  wind-fanners,  or  ne-plus-ultra  of  machinery,  devisable 
'  by  man,  that  would  do  it ! 

'  Done  nevertheless,  sure  enough  it  must  be  ;  it  shall  and  will 
'  be.  We  are  rushing  swiftly  on  the  road  to  destruction  ;  every 
'  hour  bringing  us  nearer,  until  it  be,  in  some  measure,  done. 
'  The  doing  of  it  is  not  doubtful ;  only  the  method  and  the  costs  ! 
'  Nay  I  will  even  mention  to  you  an  infallible  sifting-process 
'  whereby  he  that  has  ability  will  be  sifted  out  to  rule  among  us, 

*  and  that  same  blessed  Aristocracy  of  Talent  be  verily,  in  an 
'  approximate  degree,  vouchsafed  us  by  and  by  :  an  infallible  sift- 
1  ing-process  ;  to  which,  however,  no  soul  can  help  his  neighbour, 
'  but  each  must,  with  devout  prayer  to  Heaven,  endeavour  to  help 
'  himself.  It  is,  O  friends,  that  all  of  us,  that  many  of  us,  should 
(  acquire  the  true  eye  for  talent,  which  is  dreadfully  wanting  at 
'  present !  The  true  eye  for  talent  presupposes  the  true  reverence 
'  for  it,  —  O  Heavens,  presupposes  so  many  things  ! 

'  For  example,  you  Bobus  Higgins,  Sausage-maker  on  the 
'  great  scale,  who  are  raising  such  a  clamour  for  this  Aristocracy 
'  of  Talent,  what  is  it  that  you  do,  in  that  big  heart  of  yours, 
'  chiefly  in  very  fact  pay  reverence  to  1  Is  it  to  talent,  intrinsic 
'  manly  worth  of  any  kind,  you  unfortunate  Bobus  1  The  man- 
'  liest  man  that  you  saw  going  in  a  ragged  coat,  did  you  ever 
'  reverence  him  ;  did  you  so  much  as  know  that  he  was  a  manly 
'  man  at  all,  till  his  coat  grew  better  1  Talent !  I  understand  you 
'  to  be  able  to  worship  the  fame  of  talent,  the  power,  cash,  cele- 
'  brity  or  other  success  of  talent ;  but  the  talent  itself  is  a  thing 
1  you  never  saw  with  eyes.  Nay  what  is  it  in  yourself  that  you 
i  are  proudest  of,  that  you  take  most  pleasure  in  surveying  medi- 
'  tatively  in  thoughtful  moments  1  Speak  now,  is  it  the  bare  Bo- 
'  bus  stript  of  his  very  name  and  shirt,  and  turned  loose  upon 
'  society,  that  you  admire  and  thank  Heaven  for  ;  or  Bobus  with 
'  his  cash-accounts  and  larders  dropping  fatness,  with  his  respect- 
'  abilities,  warm  garnitures,  and  pony-chaise,  admirable  in  some 
'  measure  to  certain  of  the  flunkey  species  ?     Your  own  degree 

*  of  worth  and  talent,  is  it  of  infinite  value  to  you  ;  or  only  of 
1  finite,  —  measurable  by  the  degree  of  currency,  and  conquest  of 
'  praise  or  pudding,  it  has  brought  you  to  1     Bobus,  you  are  in  a 

3* 


30  PROEM. 

i  vicious  circle,  rounder  than  one  of  your  own  sausages  ;  and  will 
c  never  vote  for  or  promote  any  talent,  except  what  talent  or  sham- 
'  talent  has  already  got  itself  voted  for  !  '  —  We  here  cut  short 
the  Indicator  :  all  readers  perceiving  whither  he  now  tends. 

'More  Wisdom'  indeed:  but  where  to  find  more  Wisdom? 
We  have  already  a  Collective  Wisdom,  after  its  kind,  —  though 
'class-legislation,'  and  another  thing  or  two,  affect  it  somewhat ! 
On  the  whole,  as  they  say,  Like  people  like  priest ;  so  we  may 
say,  Like  people  like  king.  The  man  gets  himself  appointed  and 
elected  who  is  ablest  —  to  be  appointed  and  elected.  What  can 
the  incorruptiblest  Bobuses  elect,  if  it  be  not  some  Bobissimus, 
should  they  find  such  ? 

Or,  again,  perhaps  there  is  not,  in  the  whole  Nation,  Wisdom 
enough,  '  collect '  it  as  we  may,  to  make  an  adequate  Collective  ! 
That  too  is  a  case  which  may  befal :  a  ruined  man  staggers  down 
to  ruin  because  there  was  not  wisdom  enough  in  him  ;  so,  clearly 
also,  may  Twenty-seven  Million  collective  men! — But  indeed 
one  of  the  infalliblest  fruits  of  Unwisdom  in  a  Nation  is  that  it 
cannot  get  the  use  of  what  Wisdom  is  actually  in  it :  that  it  is 
not  governed  by  the  wisest  it  has,  who  alone  have  a  divine  right 
to  govern  in  all  Nations  ;  but  by  the  sham- wisest,  or  even  by  the 
openly  not-so-wise  if  they  are  handiest  otherwise  !  This  is  the 
infalliblest  result  of  Unwisdom  ;  and  also  the  balefullest,  im- 
measurablest,  —  not  so  much  what  we  can  call  a  poison-fruit,  as 
a  universal  death-disease,  and  poisoning  of  the  whole  tree.  For 
hereby  are  fostered,  fed  into  gigantic  bulk,  all  manner  of  Unwis- 
doms, poison-fruits  ;  till,  as  we  say,  the  life-tree  everywhere  is 
made  a  upas-tree,  deadly  Unwisdom  overshadowing  all  things ; 
and  there  is  done  what  lies  in  human  skill  to  stifle  all  Wisdom 
everywhere  in  the  birth,  to  smite  our  poor  world  barren  of  Wis- 
dom, —  and  make  your  utmost  Collective  Wisdom,  were  it  col- 
lected and  elected  by  Rhadamanthus,  iEacus  and  Minos,  not  to 
speak  of  drunken  Tenpound  Franchisers  with  their  ballot-boxes, 
an  inadequate  Collective !  The  Wisdom  is  not  now  there  :  how 
will  you  '  collect '  it  1  As  well  wash  Thames  mud,  by  improved 
methods,  to  find  more  gold  in  it. 

Truly,  the  first  condition  is  indispensable,  That  Wisdom  be 


ARISTOCRACY    OF    TALENT.  31 

there  :  but  the  second  is  like  unto  it,  is  properly  one  with  it : 
these  two  conditions  act  and  react  through  every  fibre  of  them, 
and  go  inseparably  together.  If  you  have  much  Wisdom  in  your 
Nation,  you  will  get  it  faithfully  collected-,  for  the  wise  love 
Wisdom,  and  will  search  for  it  as  for  life  and  salvation.  If  you 
have  little  Wisdom,  you  will  get  even  that  little  ill-collected, 
trampled  under  foot,  reduced  as  near  as  possible  to  annihilation ; 
for  fools  do  not  love  Wisdom;  they  are  foolish,  first  of  all,  be- 
cause they  have  never  loved  Wisdom,  —  but  have  loved  their 
own  appetites,  ambitions,  their  coroneted  coaches,  tankards  of 
heavy-wet.  Thus  is  your  candle  lighted  at  both  ends,  and  the 
progress  towards  consummation  is  swift.  Thus  is  fulfilled  that 
saying  in  the  Gospel :  To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given  ;  and 
from  him  that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  away  even  that  which  he 
hath.  Very  literally,  in  a  very  fatal  manner,  that  saying  is  here 
fulfilled. 

Our  '  Aristocracy  of  Talent '  seems  at  a  considerable  distance 
yet ;  does  it  not,  0  Bobus  ? 


CHAPTER    VI. 


HERO-WORSHIP. 


To  the  present  Editor,  not  less  than  to  Bobus,  a  Government  of 
the  Wisest,  what  Bobus  calls  an  Aristocracy  of  Talent,  seems  the 
one  healing  remedy  :  but  he  is  not  so  sanguine  as  Bobus  with  re- 
spect to  the  means  of  realising  it.  He  thinks  that  we  have  at 
once  missed  realising  it,  and  come  to  need  it  so  pressingly,  by  de- 
parting fai  from  the  inner  eternal  Laws  and  taking  up  with  the 
temporary  outer  semblances  of  Laws.  He  thinks  that  '  enlight- 
ened Egoism,'  never  so  luminous,  is  not  the  rule  by  which  man's 
life  can  be  led.  That  'Laissez-faire,'  '  Supply-and-demand,' 
'  Cash-payment  for  the  sole  nexus,'  and  so  forth,  were  not,  are 
not,  and  will  never  be,  a  practicable  Law  of  Union  for  a  Society 
of  Men.  That  Poor  and  Rich,  that  Governed  and  Governing, 
cannot  long  live  together  on  any  such  Law  of  Union.  Alas,  he 
thinks  that  man  has  a  soul  in  him,  different  from  the  stomach  in 
any  sense  of  this  word  ;  that  if  said  soul  be  asphyxied,  and  lie 
quietly  forgotten,  the  man  and  his  affairs  are  in  a  bad  way.  He 
thinks  that  said  soul  will  have  to  be  resuscitated  from  its  asphyxia  ; 
that  if  it  prove  irresuscitable,  the  man  is  not  long  for  this  world. 
In  brief,  that  Midas-eared  Mammonism,  double-barrelled  Dilettan- 
tism, and  their  thousand  adjuncts  and  corollaries,  are  not  the  Law 
by  which  God  Almighty  has  appointed  this  his  Universe  to  go. 
That,  once  for  all,  these  are  not  the  Law  :  and  then  farther  that 
we  shall  have  to  return  to  what  is  the  Law,  —  not  by  smooth 
flowery  paths,  it  is  like,  and  with  '  tremendous  cheers '  in  our 
throat ;  but  over  steep  untrodden  places,  through  stormclad 
chasms,  waste  oceans,  and  the  bosom  of  tornadoes  ;  thank  Heav- 
en, if  not  through  very  Chaos  and  the  Abyss  !  The  resuscitating 
of  a  soul  that  has  gone  to  asphyxia  is  no  momentary  or  pleasant 
process,  but  a  long  and  terrible  one. 


HERO-WORSHIP.  33 

To  the  present  Editor,  '  Hero-worship,'  as  he  has  elsewhere 
named  it,  means  much  more  than  an  elected  Parliament,  or  stated 
Aristocracy,  of  the  Wisest ;  for,  in  his  dialect,  it  is  the  summary, 
ultimate  essence,  and  supreme  practical  perfection  of  all  manner 
of  '  worship,'  and  true  worships  and  noblenesses  whatsoever. 
Such  blessed  Parliament  and,  were  it  once  in  perfection,  blessed 
Aristocracy  of  the  Wisest,  god-honoured  and  man-honoured,  he 
does  look  for,  more  and  more  perfected,  —  as  the  topmost  blessed 
practical  apex  of  a  whole  world  reformed  from  sham-worship,  in- 
formed anew  with  worship,  with  truth  and  blessedness  !  He 
thinks  that  Hero-worship,  done  differently  in  every  different  epoch 
of  the  world,  is  the  soul  of  all  social  business  among  men  ;  that 
the  doing  of  it  well,  or  the  doing  of  it  ill,  measures  accurately 
what  degree  of  well-being  or  of  ill-being  there  is  in  the  world's 
affairs.  He  thinks  that  we,  on  the  whole,  do  our  Hero-worship 
worse  than  any  Nation  in  this  world -ever  did  it  before  :  that  the 
Burns  an  Exciseman,  the  Byron  a  Literary  Lion,  are  intrinsically, 
all  things  considered,  a  baser  and  falser  phenomenon  than  the 
Odin  a  God,  the  Mahomet  a  Prophet  of  God.  It  is  this  Editor's 
clear  opinion,  accordingly,  that  we  must  learn  to  do  our  Hero- 
worship  better  ;  that  to  do  it  better  and  better,  means  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  Nation's  soul  from  its  asphyxia,  and  the  return  of 
blessed  life  to  us,  —  Heaven's  blessed  life,  not  Mammon's  galvanic 
accursed  one.  To  resuscitate  the  Asphyxied,  apparently  now 
moribund,  and  in  the  last  agony  if  not  resuscitated  :  such  and  no 
other  seems  the  consummation. 

'Hero-worship,'  if  you  will,  —  yes,  friends;  but,  first  of  all, 
by  being  ourselves  of  heroic  mind.  A  whole  world  of  Heroes  ;  a 
world  not  of  Flunkeys,  where  no  Hero-King  can  reign :  that  is 
what  we  aim  at !  We,  for  our  share,  will  put  away  all  Flunkey- 
ism,  Baseness,  Unveracity  from  us  ;  we  shall  then  hope  to  have 
Noblenesses  and  Veracities  set  over  us ;  never  till  then.  Let 
Bobus  and  Company  sneer,  "  That  is  your  Reform  !  "  Yes, 
Bobus,  that  is  our  Reform  ;  and  except  in  that,  and  what  will 
follow  out  of  that,  we  have  no  hope  at  all.  Reform,  like  Char- 
ity, O  Bobus,  must  begin  at  home.  Once  well  at  home,  how  will 
it  radiate  outwards,  irrepressible,  into  all  that  we  touch  and 
handle,  speak  and  work  ;  kindling  ever  new  light,  by  incalculable 


34  PROEM. 

contagion,  spreading  in  geometric  ratio,  far  and  wide,  —  doing 
good  only,  wheresoever  it  spreads,  and  not  evil. 

By  Reform  Bills,  Anti-Corn-Law  Bills,  and  thousand  other  bills 
and  methods,  we  will  demand  of  our  Governors,  with  emphasis, 
and  for  the  first  time  not  without  effect,  that  they  cease  to  be 
quacks,  or  else  depart ;  that  they  set  no  quackeries  and  block- 
headisms  anywhere  to  rule  over  us,  that  they  utter  or  act  no  cant 
to  us,  — that  it  will  be  better  if  they  do  not.  For  we  shall  now 
know  quacks  when  we  see  them ;  cant,  when  we  hear  it,  shall  be 
horrible  to  us  !  We  will  say,  with  the  poor  Frenchman  at  the 
Bar  of  the  Convention,  though  in  wiser  style  than  he,  and  'for 
the  space  '  not  '  of  an  hour  '  but  of  a  lifetime  :  "  Je  demande  Var- 
restation  des  coquins  et  des  laches.''''  '  Arrestment  of  the  knaves 
and  dastards  : '  ah,  we  know  what  a  work  that  is  ;  how  long  it 
will  be  before  they  are  all  or  mostly  got  '  arrested  : '  —  but  here  is 
one  ;  arrest  him,  in  God's  name  ;  it  is  one  fewer  !  We  will,  in 
all  practicable  ways,  by  word  and  silence,  by  act  and  refusal  to 
act,  energetically  demand  that  arrestment,  —  "je  demande  cette 
arrestation-la ! "  —  and  by  degrees  infallibly  attain  it.  Infallibly  : 
for  light  spreads  ;  all  human  souls,  never  so  bedarkened,  love 
light;  light  once  kindled  spreads,  till  all  is  luminous  ;  — till  the 
cry,  "  Arrest  your  knaves  and  dastards  "  rises  imperative  from 
millions  of  hearts,  and  rings  and  reigns  from  sea  to  sea.  Nay, 
how  many  of  them  may  we  not  '  arrest '  with  our  own  hands, 
even  now  ;  we  !  Do  not  countenance  them,  thou  there  :  turn 
away  from  their  lackered  sumptuosities,  their  belauded  sophistries, 
their  serpent  graciosities,  their  spoken  and  acted  cant,  with  a  sa- 
cred horror,  with  an  Apage  Satanas.  — Bobus  and  Company,  and 
all  men  will  gradually  join  us.  We  demand  arrestment  of  the 
knaves  and  dastards,  and  begin  by  arresting  our  own  poor  selves 
out  of  that  fraternity.  There  is  no  other  reform  conceivable. 
Thou  and  I,  my  friend,  can,  in  the  most  flunkey  world,  make, 
each  of  us,  one  non-flunkey,  one  hero,  if  we  like  :  that  will  be 
two  heroes  to  begin  with  :  —  Courage !  even  that  is  a  whole 
world  of  heroes  to  end  with,  or  what  we  poor  Two  can  do  in 
furtherance  thereof ! 

Yes,  friends :  Hero-kings  and  a  whole  world  not  unheroic,  — 
there  lies  the  port  and  happy  haven,  towards  which,  through  all 


HERO-WORSHIP.  35 

these  stormtost  seas,  French  Revolutions,  Chartisms,  Manchester 
Insurrections,  that  make  the  heart  sick  in  these  bad  days,  the 
Supreme  Powers  are  driving  us.  On  the  whole,  blessed  be  the 
Supreme  Powers,  stern  as  they  are  !  Towards  that  haven  will 
we,  O  friends ;  let  all  true  men,  with  what  of  faculty  is  in  them, 
bend  valiantly,  incessantly,  with  thousandfold  endeavour,  thither, 
thither  !  There,  or  else  in  the  Ocean-abysses,  it  is  very  clear  to 
me,  we  shall  arrive. 

Well ;  here  truly  is  no  answer  to  the  Sphinx-question  ;  not  the 
answer  a  disconsolate  Public,  inquiring  at  the  College  of  Health, 
was  in  hopes  of!  A  total  change  of  regimen,  change  of  constitu- 
tion and  existence  from  the  very  centre  of  it ;  a  new  body  to  be 
got,  with  resuscitated  soul,  —  not  without  convulsive  travail- 
throes  ;  as  all  birth  and  new-birth  presupposes  travail !  This  is 
sad  news  to  a  disconsolate  discerning  Public,  hoping  to  have  got 
off  by  some  Morrison's  Pill,  some  Saint-John's  corrosive  mixture 
and  perhaps  a  little  blister y  friction  on  the  back  !  —  We  were  pre- 
pared to  part  with  our  Corn-Law,  with  various  Laws  and  Unlaws  : 
but  this,  what  is  this1? 

Nor  has  the  Editor  forgotten  how  it  fares  with  your  ill-boding 
Cassandras  in  Sieges  of  Troy.  Imminent  perdition  is  not  usually 
driven  away  by  words  of  warning.  Didactic  Destiny  has  other 
methods  in  store ;  or  these  would  fail  always.  Such  words 
should,  nevertheless,  be  uttered,  when  they  dwell  truly  in  the 
soul  of  any  man.  Words  are  hard,  are  importunate ;  but  how 
much  harder  the  importunate  events  they  foreshadow  !  Here  and 
there  a  human  soul  may  listen  to  the  words, — who  knows  how 
many  human  souls  ?  whereby  the  importunate  events,  if  not  divert- 
ed and  prevented,  will  be  rendered  less  hard.  The  present  Editor's 
purpose  is  to  himself  full  of  hope. 

For  though  fierce  travails,  though  wide  seas  and  roaring  gulfs 
lie  before  us,  is  it  not  something  if  a  Loadstar,  in  the  eternal  sky, 
do  once  more  disclose  itself;  an  everlasting  light,  shining  through 
all  cloud-tempests  and  roaring  billows,  ever  as  we  emerge  from 
the  trough  of  the  sea :  the  blessed  beacon,  far  off  on  the  edge  of 
far  horizons,  towards  which  we  are  to  steer  incessantly  for  life? 
Is  it  not  something;  O  Heavens,  is  it  not  all?     There  lies  the 


36  PROEM. 

Heroic  Promised  Land  ;  under  that  Heaven' s-light,  my  brethren, 
bloom  the  Happy  Isles,  — there,  O  there  !     Thither  will  we  ; 

1  There  dwells  the  great  Achilles  whom  we  knew.'  * 
There  dwell  all  Heroes,  and  will  dwell :  thither,  all  ye  heroic- 
minded  !  — The  Heaven's  Loadstar  once  clearly  in  our  eye,  how 
will  each  true  man  stand  truly  to  his  work  in  the  ship  ;  how,  with 
undying  hope,  will  all  things  be  fronted,  all  be  conquered.  Nay, 
with  the  ship's  prow  once  turned  in  that  direction,  is  not  all,  as  it 
were,  already  well?  Sick  wasting  misery  has  become  noble 
manful  effort  with  a  goal  in  our  eye.  '  The  choking  Nightmare 
chokes  us  no  longer  ;  for  we  stir  under  it ;  the  Nightmare  has 
already  fled.'  — 

Certainly,  could  the  present  Editor  instruct  men  how  to  know 
Wisdom,  Heroism,  when  they  see  it,  that  they  might  do  reverence 
to  it  only,  and  loyally  make  it  ruler  over  them, — yes,  he  were 
the  living  epitome  of  all  Editors,  Teachers,  Prophets,  that  now 
teach  and  prophesy  ;  he  were  an  .Apo/Zo-Morrison,  a  Trismegistus 
and  effective  Cassandra  !  Let  no  Able  Editor  hope  such  things. 
It  is  to  be  expected  the  present  laws  of  copyright,  rate  of  reward 
per  sheet,  and  other  considerations,  will  save  him  from  that  peril. 
Let  no  Editor  hope  such  things  :  no  ;  —  and  yet  let  all  Editors  aim 
towards  such  things,  and  even  towards  such  alone  !  One  knows 
not  what  the  meaning  of  editing  and  writing  is,  if  even  this  be  not  it. 

Enough,  to  the  present  Editor  it  has  seemed  possible  some 
glimmering  of  light,  for  here  and  there  a  human  soul,  might  lie  in 
these  confused  Paper-Masses  now  intrusted  to  him  ;  wherefore  he 
determines  to  edit  the  same.  Out  of  old  Books,  new  Writings, 
and  much  Meditation  not  of  yesterday,  he  will  endeavor  to  select 
a  thing  or  two  ;  and  from  the  Past,  in  a  circuitous  way,  illustrate 
the  Present  and  the  Future.  The  Past  is  a  dim  indubitable  fact : 
the  Future  too  is  one,  only  dimmer ;  nay  properly  it  is  the  same 
fact  in  new  dress  and  development.  For  the  Present  holds  in  it 
both  the  whole  Past  and  the  whole  Future  ; — as  the  Life-trek 
Igdrasil,  wide-waving,  many-toned,  has  its  roots  down  deep  in 
the  Death-kingdoms,  among  the  oldest  dead  dust  of  men,  and  with 
its  boughs  reaches  always  beyond  the  stars ;  and  in  all  times  and 
places  is  one  and  the  same  Life-tree  ! 

*  Tennyson's  Poems  (Ulysses). 


BOOK  II. 

THE  ANCIENT  MONK. 


CHAPTER    I. 


JOCELIN    OF    BRAKELOND. 


We  will,  in  this  Second  Portion  of  our  Work,  strive  to  penetrate 
a  little,  by  means  of  certain  confused  Papers,  printed  and  other, 
into  a  somewhat  remote  Century ;  and  to  look  face  to  face  on  it, 
in  hope  of  perhaps  illustrating  our  own  poor  Century  thereby. 
It  seems  a  circuitous  way  ;  but  it  may  prove  a  way  nevertheless. 
For  man  has  even  been  a  striving-,  struggling",  and,  in  spite  of 
wide-spread  calumnies  to  the  contrary,  a  veracious  creature  :  the 
Centuries  too  are  all  lineal  children  of  one  another  ;  and  often,  in 
the  portrait  of  early  grandfathers,  this  and  the  other  enigmatic 
feature  of  the  newest  grandson  shall  disclose  itself,  to  mutual  elu- 
cidation.    This  Editor  will  venture  on  such  a  thing. 

Besides,  in  Editors'  Books,  and  indeed  everywhere  else  in  the 
world  of  Today,  a  certain  latitude  of  movement  grows  more  and 
more  becoming  for  the  practical  man.  Salvation  lies  not  in  tight 
lacing,  in  these  times  ;  —  how  far  from  that,  in  any  province  what- 
soever !  Readers  and  men  generally  are  getting  into  strange 
habits  of  asking  all  persons  and  things,  from  poor  Editors'  Books 
up  to  Church  Bishops  and  State  Potentates,  not,  By  what  desig- 
nation art  thou  called ;  in  what  wig  and  black  triangle  dost  thou 
walk  abroad?  Heavens,  I  know  thy  destination  and  black  triangle 
well  enough  !  But,  in  God's  name,  what  art  thou  %  Not  No- 
thing, sayest  thou  !  Then  if  not,  How  much  and  what  ?  This 
is  the  thing  I  would  know  ;  and  even  must  soon  know,  such  a  pass 

am  I  come  to  ! What  weather-symptoms,  —  not  for  the  poor 

Editor  of  Books  alone  !  The  Editor  of  Books  may  understand 
withal  that  if,  as  is  said,  '  many  kinds  are  permissible,'  there  is 
one  kind  not  permissible,  '  the  kind  that  has  nothing  in  it,  le  genre 
ennuyeux ; '  and  go  on  his  way  accordingly. 


40  THE   ANCIENT    MONK. 

A  certain  Jocelinus  de  Brakelonda,  a  natural-born  Englishman, 
has  left  us  an  extremely  foreign  Book,*  which  the  labours  of  the 
Camden  Society  have  brought  to  light  in  these  days.  Jocelin's 
Book,  the  '  Chronicle,'  or  private  Boswellean  Notebook,  of  Joce- 
lin,  a  certain  old  St.  Edmundsbury  Monk  and  Boswell,  now  seven 
centuries  old,  how  remote  is  it  from  us ;  exotic,  extraneous ;  in 
all  ways,  coming  from  far  abroad !  The  language  of  it  is  not 
foreign  only  but  dead  :  Monk-Latin  lies  across  not  the  British 
Channel,  but  the  ninefold  Stygian  Marshes,  Stream  of  Lethe,  and 
one  knows  not  where  !  Roman  Latin  itself,  still  alive  foi  us  in 
the  Elysian  Fields  of  Memory,  is  domestic  in  comparison.  And 
then  the  ideas,  life-furniture,  whole  workings  and  ways  of  this 
worthy  Jocelin  ;  covered  deeper  than  Pompeii  with  the  lava-ashes 
and  inarticulate  wreck  of  seven  hundred  years  ! 

Jocelin  of  Brakelond  cannot  be  called  a  conspicuous  literary 
character  ;  indeed  few  mortals  that  have  left  so  visible  a  work,  or 
footmark,  behind  them  can  be  more  obscure.  One  other  of  those 
vanished  Existences,  whose  work  has  not  yet  vanished  ;  —  almost 
a  pathetic  phenomenon,  were  not  the  whole  world  full  of  such  ! 
The  builders  of  Stonehenge,  for  example  :  —  or  alas,  what  say 
we,  Stonehenge  and  builders?  The  writers  of  the  Universal  Re- 
view and  Ho?ner,s  Iliad ;  the  paviers  of  London  streets  ;  —  sooner 
or  later,  the  entire  Posterity  of  Adam  !  It  is  a  pathetic  phenom- 
enon ;  but  an  irremediable,  nay,  if  well  meditated,  a  consoling 
one. 

By  his  dialect  of  Monk-Latin,  and  indeed  by  his  name,  this 
Jocelin  seems  to  have  been  a  Norman  Englishman  ;  the  surname 
de  Brakelonda  indicates  a  native  of  St.  Edmundsbury  itself,  Brake- 
lend  being  the  known  old  name  of  a  street  or  quarter  in  that  vener- 
able Town.  Then  farther,  sure  enough,  our  Jocelin  was  a  Monk 
of  St.  Edmundsbury  Convent ;  held  some  '  obediential  subaltern 
officiality  there,  or  rather,  in  succession  several ;  was,  for  one 
thing,  '  chaplain  to  my  Lord  Abbot,  living  beside  him  night  and 
'  day  for  the  space  of  six  years;' — which  last,  indeed,  is  the 
grand  fact  of  Jocelin's  existence,  and  properly  the  origin  of  this 

*  Chronica  Jocelini  de  Brakelonda,  de  rebus  g-estis  Samsonis  Abbatis 
Monasterii  Sancti  Edmundi :  nunc  primum  typis  mandata,  curante  Jo- 
hanne  Gage  Rokewood.     (Camden  Society,  London,  1840.) 


JOCELIN    OF    BRAKELOND.  41 

present  Book,  and  of  the  chief  meaning  it  has  for  us  now.  He 
was,  as  we  have  hinted,  a  kind  of  born  Bosivell,  though  an  in- 
finitesimally  small  one  ;  neither  did  he  altogether  want  his  John- 
son even  there  and  then.  Johnsons  are  rare  ;  yet,  as  has  been 
asserted,  Boswells  perhaps  still  rarer,  —  the  more  is  the  pity  on 
both  sides  !  This  Jocelin,  as  we  can  discern  well,  was  an  inge- 
nious and  ingenuous,  a  cheery-hearted,  innocent,  yet  withal 
shrewd,  noticing,  quick-witted  man  ;  and  from  under  his  monk's 
cowl  has  looked  out  on  that  narrow  section  of  the  world  in  a  really 
human  manner  ;  not  in  any  simial,  canine,  ovine,  or  otherwise  in- 
human  manner,  —  afflictive  to  all  that  have  humanity  !  The  man 
is  of  patient,  peaceable,  loving,  clear-smiling  nature  ;  open  for 
this  and  that.  A  wise  simplicity  is  in  him  ;  much  natural  sense  ; 
a  veracity  that  goes  deeper  than  words.  Veracity  :  it  is  the  basis 
of  all  ;  and,  some  say,  means  genius  itself;  the  prime  essence  of 
all  genius  whatsoever.  Our  Jocelin,  for  the  rest,  has  read  his 
classical  manuscripts,  his  Virgilius,  his  Flaccus,  Ovidius  Naso  ; 
of  course  still  more,  his  Homilies  and  Breviaries,  and  if  not  the 
Bible,  considerable  extracts  of  the  Bible.  Then  also  he  has  a 
pleasant  wit ;  and  loves  a  timely  joke,  though  in  mild  subdued 
manner  :  very  amiable  to  see.  A  learned  grown  man,  yet  with 
the  heart  as  of  a  good  child  ;  whose  whole  life  indeed  has  been 
that  of  a  child,  —  St.  Edmundsbury  Monastery  a  larger  kind  of 
cradle  for  him,  in  which  his  whole  prescribed  duty  was  to  sleep 
kindly,  and  love  his  mother  well !  This  is  the  Biography  of 
Jocelin  ;  '  a  man  of  excellent  religion,'  says  one  of  his  contempo- 
rary Brother  Monks,  '  eximice  religionis,  potens  sermone  et  opere.'> 
For  one  thing,  he  had  learned  to  write  a  kind  of  Monk  or  Dog- 
Latin,  still  readable  to  mankind  ;  and,  by  good  luck  for  us,  had 
bethought  him  of  noting  down  thereby  what  things  seemed  no- 
tablest  to  him.  Hence  gradually  resulted  a  Chronica  Jocelini ; 
new  Manuscript  in  the  Liber  Albus  of  St.  Edmundsbury.  Which 
Chronicle,  once  written  in  its  childlike  transparency,  in  its  inno- 
cent good-humour,  not  without  touches  of  ready  pleasant  wit  and 
many  kinds  of  worth,  other  men  liked  naturally  to  read  :  whereby 
it  failed  not  to  be  copied,  to  be  multiplied,  to  be  inserted  in  the 
Liber  Albus ;  and  so  surviving  Henry  the  Eighth,  Putney  Crom- 
well, the  Dissolution  of  Monasteries,  and  all  accidents  of  malice 
4# 


42  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

and  neglect  for  six  centuries  or  so,  it  got  into  the  Harleian  Collec- 
tion—  and  has  now  therefrom,  by  Mr.  Rokewood  of  the  Camden 
Society,  been  deciphered  into  clear  print ;  and  lies  before  us,  a 
dainty  thin  quarto,  to  interest  for  a  few  minutes  whomsoever  it  can. 
Here  too  it  will  behove  a  just  Historian  gratefully  to  say  that 
Mr.  Rokewood,  Jocelin's  Editor,  has  done  his  editorial  function 
well.  Not  only  has  he  deciphered  his  crabbed  Manuscript  into 
clear  print ;  but  he  has  attended,  what  his  fellow  editors  are  not 
always  in  the  habit  of  doing,  to  the  important  truth  that  the  Man- 
uscript so  deciphered  ought  to  have  a  meaning  for  the  reader. 
Standing  faithfully  by  his  text,  and  printing  its  very  errors  in 
spelling,  in  grammar  or  otherwise,  he  has  taken  care  by  some 
note  to  indicate  that  they  are  errors,  and  what  the  correction  of 
them  ought  to  be.  Jocelin's  Monk-Latin  is  generally  transparent, 
as  shallow  limpid  water.  But  at  any  stop  that  may  occur,  of 
which  there  are  a  few,  and  only  a  very  few,  we  have  the  comforta- 
ble assurance  that  a  meaning  does  lie  in  the  passage,  and  may  by 
industry  be  got  at :  that  a  faithful  editor's  industry  had  already 
got  at  it  before  passing  on.  A  compendious  useful  Glossary  is 
given  ;  nearly  adequate  to  help  the  uninitiated  through  :  some- 
times one  wishes  it  had  been  a  trifle  larger  ;  but,  with  a  Spelman 
and  Ducange  at  your  elbow,  how  easy  to  have  made  it  far  too 
large!  Notes  are  added,  generally  brief;  sufficiently  explanatory 
of  most  points.  Lastly,  a  copious  correct  Index  ;  which  no  such 
Book  should  want,  and  which  unluckily  very  few  possess.  And 
so,  in  a  word,  the  Chronicle  of  Jocclin  is,  as  it  professes  to  be, 
unwrapped  from  its  thick  cerements,  and  fairly  brought  forth  into 
common  daylight,  so  that  he  who  runs,  and  has  a  smattering  of 
grammar,  may  read. 

We  have  heard  so  much  of  Monks  ;  everywhere,  in  real  and 
fictitious  History,  from  Muratori  Annals  to  Radcliffe  Romances, 
these  singular  two-legged  animals,  with  their  rosaries  and  bre- 
viaries, with  their  shaven  crowns,  hair-cilices,  and  vows  of  pover- 
ty, masquerade  so  strangely  through  our  fancy ;  and  they  are  in 
fact  so  very  strange  an  extinct  species  of  the  human  family,  —  a 
veritable  Monk  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds  is  worth  attending  to,  if  by 
chance  made  visible  and  audible.     Here  he  is  ;  and  in  his  hand  a 


JOCELIN   OF    BRAKELOND.  43 

magical  speculum,  much  gone  to  rust  indeed,  yet  in  fragments 
still  clear  ;  wherein  the  marvellous  image  of  his  existence  does 
still  shadow  itself,  though  fitfully,  and  as  with  an  intermittent 
light !  Will  not  the  reader  peep  with  us  into  this  singular  camera 
lucida,  where  an  extinct  species,  though  fitfully,  can  still  be  seen 
alive?  Extinct  species,  we  say;  for  the  live  specimens  which 
still  go  about  under  that  character  are  too  evidently  to  be  classed 
as  spurious  in  Natural  History  :  the  Gospel  of  Richard  Arkvvright 
once  promulgated,  no  Monk  of  the  old  sort  is  any  longer  possible 
in  this  world.  But  fancy  a  deep-buried  Mastodon,  some  fossil 
Megatherion,  Ichthyosaurus,  were  to  begin  to  speak  from  amid  its 
rock-swathings,  never  so  indistinctly  !  The  most  extinct  fossil 
species  of  Men  or  Monks  can  do,  and  does,  this  miracle,  — thanks 
to  the  Letters  of  the  Alphabet,  good  for  so  many  things. 

Jocelin,  we  said,  was  somewhat  of  a  Boswell ;  but  unfortu- 
nately, by  Nature,  he  is  none  of  the  largest,  and  distance  has 
now  dwarfed  him  to  an  extreme  degree.  His  light  is  most  feeble, 
intermittent,  and  requires  the  intensest  kindest  inspection  ;  other- 
wise it  will  disclose  mere  vacant  haze.  It  must  be  owned,  the 
good  Jocelin,  spite  of  his  beautiful  childlike  character,  is  but  an 
altogether  imperfect  '  mirror '  of  these  old-world  things  !  The 
good  man,  he  looks  on  us  so  clear  and  cheery,  and  in  his  neigh- 
bourly soft-smiling  eyes  we  see  so  well  our  own  shadow,  —  we 
have  a  longing  always  to  cross-question  him,  to  force  from  him  an 
explanation  of  much.  But  no:  Jocelin,  though  he  talks  with 
such  clear  familiarity,  like  a  next-door  neighbour,  will  not  answer 
any  question  :  that  is  the  peculiarity  of  him,  dead  these  six  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years,  and  quite  deaf  to  us,  though  still  so  audible ! 
The  good  man  he  cannot  help  it,  nor  can  we. 

But  truly  it  is  a  strange  consideration  this  simple  one,  as  we  go 
on  with  him,  or  indeed  with  any  lucid  simple-hearted  soul  like 
him  :  Behold  therefore,  this  England  of  the  Year  1200  was  no 
chimerical  vacuity  or  dreamland,  peopled  with  mere  vaporous 
Fantasms,  Rymer's  Fcedera,  and  Doctrines  of  the  Constitution  ; 
but  a  green  solid  place,  that  grew  corn  and  several  other  things. 
The  Sun  shone  on  it ;  the  vicissitude  of  seasons  and  human  for- 
tunes. Cloth  was  woven  and  worn  ;  ditches  were  dug,  furrow- 
fields  ploughed,  and  houses  built.     Day  by  day  all  men  and  cattle 


44  THE   ANCIENT   MONK. 

rose  to  labour,  and  night  by  night  returned  home  weary  to  their 
several  lairs.  In  wondrous  Dualism,  then  as  now,  lived  nations  of 
breathing  men  :  alternating,  in  all  ways,  between  Light  and 
Dark  ;  between  joy  and  sorrow,  between  rest  and  toil, — between 
hope,  hope  reaching  high  as  Heaven,  and  fear  deep  as  very  Hell. 
Not  vapour  Fantasms,  Rymer's  Fcedera  at  all !  Cceur-de-Lion 
was  not  a  theatrical  popinjay  with  greaves  and  steel-cap  on  it,  but 
a  man  living  upon  victuals, — not  imported  by  Peel's  Tariff. 
Cceur-de-Lion  came  palpably  athwart  this  Jocelin  at  St.  Edmunds- 
bury  ;  and  had  almost  peeled  the  sacred  gold  '  Feretrum '.,'  or  St. 
Edmund  Shrine  itself,  to  ransom  him  out  of  the  Danube  Jail. 

These  clear  eyes  of  neighbour  Jocelin  looked  on  the  bodily 
presence  of  King  John  ;  the  very  John  Sansterre,  or  Lackland, 
who  signed  Magna  Charta  afterwards  in  Runnymead.  Lackland, 
with  a  great  retinue,  boarded  once,  for  the  matter  of  a  fortnight, 
in  St.  Edmundsbury  Convent ;  daily  in  the  very  eyesight,  palpa- 
ble to  the  very  fingers  of  our  Jocelin  :  0  Jocelin,  what  did  he  say, 
what  did  he  do  ;  how  looked  he,  lived  he  ;  —  at  the  very  lowest, 
what  coat  or  breeches  had  he  on  ?  Jocelin  is  obstinately  silent. 
Jocelin  marks  down  what  interests  him;  entirely  deaf  to  us. 
With  Jocelin's  eyes  we  discern  almost  nothing  of  John  Lackland. 
As  through  a  glass  darkly,  we  with  our  own  eyes  and  appliances, 
intensely  looking,  discern  at  most:  A  blustering,  dissipated, 
human  figure,  with  a  kind  of  blackguard  quality  air,  in  cramoisy 
velvet,  or  other  uncertain  texture,  uncertain  cut,  with  much 
plumage  and  fringing  ;  amid  numerous  other  human  figures  of  the 
like ;  riding  abroad  with  hawks ;  talking  noisy  nonsense  ;  — 
tearing  out  the  bowels  of  St.  Edmundsbury  Convent  (its  larders 
namely  and  cellars)  in  the  most  ruinous  wray,  by  living  at  rack  and 
manger  there.  Jocelin  notes  only,  with  a  slight  subacidity  of 
manner,  that  the  King's  Majesty,  Dominus  Rex,  did  leave,  as  gift 
for  our  St.  Edmund  Shrine,  a  handsome  enough  silk  cloak,  —  or 
rather  pretended  to  leave,  for  one  of  his  retinue  borrowed  it  of  us, 
and  we  never  got  sight  of  it  again  ;  and,  on  the  whole,  that  the 
Dominus  Rex,  at  departing,  gave  us  'thirteen  sterlingii,'1  one 
shilling  and  one  penny,  to  say  a  mass  for  him  ;  and  so  departed, 
—  like  a  shabby  Lackland  as  he  was  !  '  Thirteen  pence  sterling,' 
this  was  what  the  Convent  got  from  Lackland,  for  all  the  victuals 


JOCELIN    OF    BRAKELOND.  45 

he  and  his  had  made  away  with.  We  of  course  said  our  mass  for 
him,  having-  covenanted  to  do  it, — but  let  impartial  posterity 
judge  with  what  degree  of  fervour ! 

And  in  this  manner  vanishes  King  Lackland  ;  traverses  swiftly 
our  strange  intermittent  magic-mirror,  jingling  the  shabby  thirteen 
pence  merely  ;  and  rides  with  his  hawks  into  Egyptian  night 
again.  It  is  Jocelin's  manner  with  all  things ;  and  it  is  men's 
manner  and  men's  necessity.  How  intermittent  is  our  good  Joce- 
lin  ;  marking  down,  without  eye  to  us,  what  he  finds  interesting! 
How  much  in  Jocelin,  as  in  all  History,  and  indeed  in  all  Nature, 
is  at  once  inscrutable  and  certain  ;  so  dim,  yet  so  indubitable ; 
exciting  us  to  endless  considerations.  For  King  Lackland  was 
there,  verily  he  ;  and  did  leave  these  tredecim  sterlingii  if  nothing 
more,  and  did  live  and  look  in  one  way  or  the  other,  and  a  whole 
world  was  living  and  looking  along  with  him  !  There,  we  say,  is 
the  grand  peculiarity  ;  the  immeasurable  one  ;  distinguishing,  to 
a  really  infinite  degree,  the  poorest  historical  Fact  from  all  Fiction 
whatsoever.  Fiction,  '  Imagination,'  '  Imaginative  Poetry,'  &c. 
&c,  except  as  the  vehicle  for  truth,  or  fact  of  some  sort,  —  which 
surely  a  man  should  first  try  various  other  ways  of  vehiculating, 
and  conveying  safe,  —  what  is  it  !  Let  the  Minerva  and  other 
Presses  respond  !  — 

But  it  is  time  we  were  in  St.  Edmundsbury  Monastery,  and 
Seven  good  Centuries  off.  If  indeed  it  be  possible,  by  any  aid 
of  Jocelin,  by  any  human  art,  to  get  thither,  with  a  reader  or  two 
still  ^following  us? 


CHAPTER  II. 


ST.    EDMUXDSBURY. 


The  Burg,  Bury,  or  '  Berry'  as  they  call  it,  of  St.  Emund  is 
still  a  prosperous  brisk  Town  ;  beautifully  diversifying,  with  its 
clear  brick  houses,  ancient  clean  streets,  and  twenty  or  fifteen 
thousand  busy  souls,  the  general  grassy  face  of  Suffolk  ;  looking 
out  right  pleasantly,  from  its  hill -slope,  towards  the  rising  Sun  : 
and  on  the  eastern  edge  of  it,  still  runs,  long,  black  and  massive, 
a  range  of  monastic  ruins  ;  into  the  wide  internal  spaces  of  which 
the  stranger  is  admitted  on  payment  of  one  shilling.  Internal 
spaces  laid  out,  at  present,  as  a  botanic  garden.  Here  stranger  or 
townsman,  sauntering  at  his  leisure  amid  these  vast  grim  venerable 
ruins,  may  persuade  himself  that  an  Abbey  of  St.  Edmundsbury 
did  once  exist ;  nay  there  is  no  doubt  of  it  :  see  here  the  ancient 
massive  Gateway,  of  architecture  interesting  to  the  eye  of  Dilet- 
tantism ;  and  farther  on,  that  other  ancient  Gateway,  now  about 
to  tumble,  unless  Dilettantism,  in  these  very  months,  can  subscribe 
money  to  cramp  it  and  prop  it ! 

Here,  sure  enough,  is  an  Abbey  ;  beautiful  in  the  eye  of  Dilet- 
tantism. Giant  Pedantry  also  will  step  in,  with  its  huge  Dugdale 
and  other  enormous  Monasticons  under  its  arm,  and  cheerfully  ap- 
prise you,  That  this  was  a  very  great  Abbey,  owner  and  indeed 
creator  of  St.  Edmund's  Town  itself,  owner  of  wide  lands  and 
revenues  ;  nay  that  its  lands  were  once  a  county  of  themselves  ; 
that  indeed  King  Canute  or  Knut  was  very  kind  to  it,  and  gave 
St.  Edmund  his  own  gold  crown  off  his  head,  on  one  occasion  : 
for  the  rest,  that  the  Monks  were  of  such  and  such  a  genus,  such 
and  such  a  number  ;  that  they  had  so  many  carucates  of  land  in 
this  hundred,  and  so  many  in  that ;  and  then  farther  that  the  large 
Tower  or  Belfry  was  built  by  such  a  one,  and  the  smaller  Belfry 


ST.    EDMUNDSBURY.  47 

was  built  by  &c.  &c.  — Till  human  nature  can  stand  no  more  of 
it ;  till  human  nature  desperately  take  refuge  in  forgetful n ess,  al- 
most in  flat  disbelief  of  the  whole  business,  Monks,  Monastery, 
Belfries,  Carucates  and  all !  Alas,  what  mountains  of  dead  ashes, 
wreck  and  burnt  bones,  does  assiduous  Pedantry  dig  up  from  the 
Past  Time,  and  name  it  History,  and  Philosophy  of  History  ;  till, 
as  we  say,  the  human  soul  sinks  wearied  and  bewildered  ;  till  the 
Past  Time  seems  all  one  infinite  incredible  grey  void,  without  sun, 
stars,  hearth-fires,  or  candle-light ;  dim  offensive  dust-whirlwinds 
filling  universal  Nature  ;  and  over  your  Historical  Library,  it  is 
as  if  all  the  Titans  had  written  for  themselves  :  Dry  rubbish  shot 
here! 

And  yet  these  grim  old  walls  are  not  a  dilettantism  and  dubiety  ; 
they  are  an  earnest  fact.  It  was  a  most  real  and  serious  purpose 
they  were  built  for  !  Yes,  another  world  it  was,  when  these 
black  ruins,  white  in  their  new  mortar  and  fresh  chiselling,  first 
saw  the  sun  as  walls,  long  ago.  Gauge  not,  with  thy  dilettante 
compasses,  with  that  placid  dilettante  simper,  the  Heaven's-Watch- 
tower  of  our  Fathers,  the  fallen  God's-Houses,  the  Golgotha  of 
true  Souls  departed ! 

Their  architecture,  belfries,  land-car ucates  1  Yes,  —  and  that 
is  but  a  small  item  of  the  matter.  Does  it  never  give  thee  pause, 
this  other  strange  item  of  it,  that  men  then  had  a  sou!,  —  not  by 
hearsay  alone,  and  as  a  figure  of  speech  ;  but  as  a  truth  that  they 
knew,  and  practically  went  upon !  Verily  it  was  another  world 
then.  Their  Missals  have  become  incredible,  a  sheer  platitude, 
sayest  thou1?  Yes,  a  most  poor  platitude  ;  and  even,  if  thou  wilt, 
an  idolatry  and  blasphemy,  should  any  one  persuade  thee  to  be- 
lieve them,  to  pretend  praying  by  them.  But  yet  it  is  pity  we 
had  lost  tidings  of  our  souls  :  —  actually  we  shall  have  to  go  in 
quest  of  them  again,  or  worse  in  all  ways  will  befal !  A  certain 
degree  of  soul,  as  Ben  Jonson  reminds  us,  is  indispensable  to  keep 
the  very  body  from  destruction  of  the  frightfullest  sort ;  to  '  save 
us,'  says  he,  '  the  expense  of  salt.''  Ben  has  known  men  who 
had  soul  enough  to  keep  their  body  and  five  senses  from  becoming 
carrion,  and  save  salt :  — men,  and  also  Nations.  You  may  look 
in  Manchester  Hunger-mobs  and  Corn-law  Commons  Houses,  and 


48  THE   ANCIENT    MONK. 

various  other  quarters,  and  say  whether  either  soul  or  else  salt  is 
not  somewhat  wanted  at  present !  — 

Another  world,  truly :  and  this  present  poor  distressed  world 
might  get  some  profit  by  looking  wisely  into  it,  instead  of  fool- 
ishly. But  at  lowest,  0  dilettante  friend,  let  us  know  always  that 
it  was  a  world,  and  not  a  void  infinite  of  grey  haze  with  fantasms 
swimming  in  it.  These  old  St.  Edmundsbury  walls,  I  say,  were 
not  peopled  with  fantasms  ;  but  with  men  of  flesh  and  blood,  made 
altogether  as  we  are.  Had  thou  and  I  then  been,  who  knows  but 
we  ourselves  had  taken  refuge  from  an  evil  Time,  and  fled  to 
dwell  here,  and  meditate  on  an  Eternity,  in  such  fashion  as 
we  could?  Alas,  how  like  an  old  osseous  fragment,  a  broken 
blackened  shin-bone  of  the  old  dead  Ages,  this  black  ruin  looks 
out,  not  yet  covered  by  the  soil  ;  still  indicating  what  a  once  gi- 
gantic Life  lies  buried  there  !  It  is  dead  now,  and  dumb  ;  hut  was 
alive  once,  and  spake.  For  twenty  generations,  here  was  the 
earthly  arena  where  painful  living  men  worked  out  their  life- 
wrestle,  —  looked  at  by  Earth,  by  Heaven  and  Hell.  Bells  tolled 
to  prayers  ;  and  men,  of  many  humours,  various  thoughts,  chanted 
vespers,  matins ;  —  and  round  the  little  islet  of  their  life  rolled 
forever  (as  round  ours  still  rolls,  though  we  are  blind  and  deaf) 
the  illimitable  Ocean,  tinting  all  things  with  its  eternal  hues  and 
reflexes  ;  making  strange  prophetic  music  !  How  silent  now ;  all 
departed,  clean  gone.  The  World-Dramaturgist  has  written : 
Exeunt.  The  devouring  Time-Demons  have  made  away  with  it 
all :  and  in  its  stead,  there  is  either  nothing  ;  or  what  is  worse, 
offensive  universal  dustclouds,  and  grey  eclipse  of  Earth  and 
Heaven,  from  '  dry  rubbish  shot  here  !  '  — 

Truly,  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  get  across  the  chasm  of  Seven 
Centuries,  filled  with  such  material.  But  here,  of  all  helps,  is 
not  a  Boswell  the  welcomest ;  even  a  small  Boswell  ?  Veracity, 
true  simplicity  of  heart,  how  valuable  are  these  always  !  He  that 
speaks  what  is  really  in  him,  will  find  men  to  listen,  though  under 
never  such  impediments.  Even  gossip,  springing  free  and  cheery 
from  a  human  heart,  this  too  is  a  kind  of  veracity  and  speech;  — 
much  preferable  to  pedantry  and  inane  grey  haze  !  Joeelin  is 
weak  and  garrulous,  but  he  is  human.     Through  the  thin  watery 


ST.    EDMUNDSBURY.  49 

gossip  of  our  Jocelin,  we  do  get  some  glimpses  of  that  deep-buried 
Time  ;  discern  veritably,  though  in  a  fitful  intermittent  manner, 
these  antique  figures  and  their  life-method,  face  to  face !  Beauti- 
fully, in  our  earnest  loving  glance,  the  old  centuries  melt  from 
opaque  to  partially  translucent,  transparent  here  and  there ;  and 
the  void  black  Night,  one  finds,  is  but  the  summing  up  of  innu- 
merable peopled  luminous  Days.  Not  parchment  Chartularies, 
Doctrines  of  the  Constitution,  O  Dryasdust ;  not  altogether,  my 
erudite  friend !  — 

Readers  who  please  to  go  along  with  us  into  this  poor  Jocelini 
Chronica  shall  wander  inconveniently  enough,  as  in  wintry  twi- 
light, through  some  poor  stript  hazel-grove,  rustling  with  foolish 
noises,  and  perpetually  hindering  the  eyesight ;  but  across  which, 
here  and  there,  some  real  human  figure  is  seen  moving  ;  very 
strange ;  whom  we  could  hail  if  he  would  answer ;  —  and  we 
look  into  a  pair  of  eyes  deep  as  our  own,  imaging  our  own,  but 
all  unconscious  of  us ;  to  whom  we  for  the  time  are  become  as 
spirits  and  invisible  ! 


CHAPTER  III. 


LANDLORD     EDMUND. 


Some  three  centuries  or  so  had  elapsed  since  Beodric 's-worth  * 
became  St.  Edmund's  Stow,  St.  Edmund's  Town  and  Monastery, 
before  Jocelin  entered  himself  a  Novice  there.  'It  was,'  says 
he,  'the  year  after  the  Flemings  were  defeated  at  Fornham  St. 
Genevieve.' 

Much  passes  away  into  oblivion  :  this  glorious  victory  over  the 
Flemings  at  Fornham  has,  at  the  present  date,  greatly  dimmed 
itself  out  of  the  minds  of  men.  A  victory  and  battle  nevertheless 
it  was,  in  its  time  :  some  thrice-renowned  Earl  of  Leicester,  not 
of  the  De  Montfort  breed,  (as  may  be  read  in  Philosophical  and 
other  Histories,  could  any  human  memory  retain  such  things,) 
had  quarrelled  with  his  sovereign,  Henry  Second  of  the  name  ; 
had  been  worsted,  it  is  like,  and  maltreated,  and  obliged  to  fly  to 
foreign  parts  ;  but  had  rallied  there  into  new  vigour  ;  and  so,  in 
the  year  1173,  returns  across  the  German  Sea  with  a  vengeful 

*  Dryasdust  puzzles  and  pokes  for  some  biography  of  this  Beodric  ;  and 
repugns  to  consider  him  a  mere  East- Anglian  Person  of  Condition,  not  in 
need  of  a  biography,  —  whose  peopft,  weorth  or  worth,  that  is  to  say,  Growth, 
Increase,  or  as  we  should  now  name  it,  Estate,  that  same  Hamlet  and 
wood  Mansion,  now  St.  Edmund's  Bury,  originally  was.  For,  adds  our 
erudite  Friend,  the  Saxon  peopSan  equivalent  to  the  German  werden,  means 
to  g-roic,  to  become;  traces  of  which  old  vocable  are  still  found  in  the 
North-country  dialects,  as,  '  What  is  word  of  him  ?  '  meaning  '  What  is 
become  of  him  ?  '  and  the  like.  Nay  we  in  modern  English  still  say,  '  Wo 
worth  the  hour.'  (Wo  befal  the  hour),  and  speak  of  the  '  Weird  Sisters  ; ' 
not  to  mention  the  innumerable  other  names  of  places  still  ending  in  weorth 
or  worth.  And  indeed,  our  common  noun  worth,  in  the  sense  of  value, 
does  not  this  mean  simply,  What  a  thing  has  groicn  to,  What  a  man  has 
grown  to,  How  much  he  amounts  to,  —  by  the  Threadneedle-street  stand- 
ard or  another ! 


LANDLORD     EDMUND.  51 

army  of  Flemings.  Returns,  to  the  coast  of  Suffolk  ;  to  Fram- 
lingham  Castle,  where  he  is  welcomed  ;  westward  towards  St. 
Edmundsbury  and  Fornham  Church,  where  he  is  met  by  the  con- 
stituted authorities  with  posse  comitatus ;  and  swiftly  cut  in  pieces, 
he  and  his,  or  laid  by  the  heels  ;  on  the  right  bank  of  the  obscure 
river  Lark,  —  as  traces  still  existing  will  verify. 

For  the  river  Lark,  though  not  very  discoverably,  still  runs  or 
stagnates  in  that  country  ;  and  the  battle-ground  is  there  ;  serving 
at  present  as  a  pleasure-ground  to  his  Grace  of  Newcastle.  Cop- 
per pennies  of  Henry  II.  are  still  found  there  ;  —  rotted  out  from 
the  pouches  of  poor  slain  soldiers,  who  had  not  had  time  to  buy 
liquor  with  them.  In  the  river  Lark  itself  was  fished  up,  within 
man's  memory,  an  antique  gold  ring  ;  which  fond  Dilettantism  can 
almost  believe  may  have  been  the  very  ring  Countess  Leicester 
threw  away,  in  her  flight,  into  that  same  Lark  river  or  ditch.* 
Nay,  few  years  ago,  in  tearing  out  an  enormous  superannuated 
ash-tree,  now  grown  quite  corpulent,  bursten,  superfluous,  but 
long  a  fixture  in  the  soil,  and  not  to  be  dislodged  without  revolu- 
tion,—  there  was  laid  bare,  under  its  roots,  '  a  circular  mound  of 
skeletons  wonderfully  complete,'  all  radiating  from  a  centre,  faces 
upwards,  feet  inwards ;  a  '  radiation '  not  of  Light,  but  of  the 
Nether  Darkness  rather ;  and  evidently  the  fruit  of  battle  ;  for 
'  many  of  the  heads  were  cleft,  or  had  arrow-holes  in  them.' 
The  Battle  of  Fornham,  therefore,  is  a  fact,  though  a  forgotten 
one  ;  no  less  obscure  than  undeniable,  —  like  so  many  other  facts. 

Like  the  St.  Edmund's  Monastery  itself!  Who  can  doubt, 
after  what  we  have  said,  that  there  was  a  Monastery  here  at  one 
time  1  No  doubt  at  all  there  was  a  Monastery  here  ;  no  doubt, 
some  three  centuries  prior  to  this  Fornham  Battle,  there  dwelt  a 
man  in  these  parts,  of  the  name  of  Edmund,  King,  Landlord, 
Duke  or  whatever  his  title  was,  of  the  Eastern  Counties  ;  —  and 
a  very  singular  man  and  landlord  he  must  have  been. 

For  his  tenants,  it  would  appear,  did  not  complain  of  him  in  the 
least ;  his  labourers  did  not  think  of  burning  his  wheatstacks, 
breaking  into  his  game-preserves ;  very  far  the  reverse  of  all  that. 

*  Lyttelton's  History  of  Henry  II.  (2nd  Edition),  v.  169,  &c. 


52  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Clear  evidence,  satisfactory  even  to  my  friend  Dryasdust,  exists 
that,  on  the  contrary,  they  honoured,  loved,  admired  this  ancient 
Landlord  to  a  quite  astonishing  degree,  —  and  indeed  at  last  to  an 
immeasurable  and  inexpressible  degree  ;  for,  finding  no  limits  or 
utterable  words  for  their  sense  of  his  worth,  they  took  to  beatify- 
ing and  adoring  him!  'Infinite  admiration,'  we  are  taught, 
'means  worship.' 

Very  singular,  —  could  we  discover  it!  What  Edmund's 
specific  duties  were ;  above  all,  what  his  method  of  discharging 
them  with  such  results  was,  would  surely  be  interesting  to  know  ; 
but  are  not  very  discoverable  now.  His  Life  has  become  a  poetic, 
nay  a  religious  My  thus :  though,  undeniably  enough,  it  was  once 
a  prose  Fact,  as  our  poor  lives  are  ;  and  even  a  very  rugged  un- 
manageable one.  This  landlord  Edmund  did  go  about  in  leather 
shoes,  with  femoralia  and  bodycoat  of  some  sort  on  him ;  and 
daily  had  his  breakfast  to  procure ;  and  daily  had  contradictory 
speeches,  and  most  contradictory  facts  not  a  few,  to  reconcile  with 
himself.  No  man  becomes  a  Saint  in  his  sleep.  Edmund,  for  in- 
stance, instead  of  reconciling  those  same  contradictory  facts  and 
speeches  to  himself;  which  means  subduing,  and,  in  a  manlike 
and  godlike  manner,  conquering  them  to  himself,  —  might  have 
merely  thrown  new  contention  into  them,  new  unwisdom  into 
them,  and  so  been  conquered  by  them  ;  much  the  commoner  case  ! 
In  that  way  he  had  proved  no  '  Saint,'  or  Divine-looking  Man,  but 
a  mere  Sinner,  and  unfortunate,  blameable,  more  or  less  Diabolic- 
looking  man  !  No  landlord  Edmund  becomes  infinitely  admirable 
in  his  sleep. " 

With  what  degree  of  wholesome  rigour  his  rents  were  collected 
we  hear  not.  Still  less  by  what  methods  he  preserved  his  game, 
whether  by  '  bushing  '  or  how,  —  and  if  the  partridge-seasons 
were  '  excellent,'  or  were  indifferent.  Neither  do  we  ascertain 
what  kind  of  Corn-bill  he  passed,  or  wisely-adjusted  Sliding- 
scale  :  —  but  indeed  there  were  few  spinners  in  those  days  ;  and 
the  nuisance  of  spinning,  and  other  dusty  labour,  was  not  yet  so 
glaring  a  one. 

How  then,  it  may  be  asked,  did  this  Edmund  rise  into  favour  ; 
become  to  such  astonishing  extent  a  recognised  Farmer's  Friend  ? 
Really,  except  it  were  by  doing  justly  and  loving  mercy,  to  an 


LANDLORD    EDMUND.  53 

unprecedented  extent,  one  does  not  know.  The  man,  it  would 
seem,  '  had  walked,'  as  they  say,  '  humbly  with  God  ; '  humbly 
and  valiantly  with  God  ;  struggling  to  make  the  Earth  heavenly, 
as  he  could  ;  instead  of  walking  sumptuously  and  pridefully  with 
Mammon,  leaving  the  Earth  to  grow  hellish  as  it  liked.  Not 
sumptuously  with  Mammon  ?  How  then  could  he  '  encourage 
trade,'  —  cause  Howel  and  James,  and  many  wine-merchants  to 
bless  him,  and  the  tailor's  heart  (though  in  a  very  short-sighted 
manner)  to  sing  for  joy  1  Much  in  this  Edmund's  Life  is  myste- 
rious. 

That  he  could,  on  occasion,  do  what  he  liked  with  his  own  is, 
meanwhile,  evident  enough.  Certain  Heathen  Physical-Force 
Ultra-Chartists,  '  Danes  '  as  they  were  then  called,  coming  into 
his  territory  with  their  '  five  points,'  or  rather  with  their  five-and- 
twenty  thousand  points  and  edges  too,  of  pikes  namely  and  battle- 
axes  ;  and  proposing  mere  Heathenism,  confiscation,  spoliation, 
and  fire  and  sword,  —  Edmund  answered  that  he  would  oppose  to 
the  utmost  such  savagery.  They  took  him  prisoner ;  again  re- 
quired his  sanction  to  said  proposals.  Edmund  again  refused. 
Cannot  we  kill  you?  cried  they. -v- Cannot  I  die1?  answered  he. 
My  life,  I  think,  is  my  own  to  do  what  I  like  with  !  And  he 
died,  under  barbarous  tortures,  refusing  to  the  last  breath  ;  and 
the  Ultra-Chartist  Danes  lost  their  propositions  ;  —  and  went  with 
their  'points'  and  other  apparatus,  as  is  supposed,  to  the  Devil, 
the  Father  of  them.  Some  say,  indeed,  these  Danes  were  not 
Ultra-Chartists,  but  Ultra-Tories,  demanding  to  reap  where  they 
had  not  sown,  and  live  in  this  world  without  working,  though  all 
the  world  should  starve  for  it ;  which  likewise  seems  a  possible 
hypothesis.  Be  what  they  might,  they  went,  as  we  say,  to  the 
Devil  :  and  Edmund  doing  what  he  liked  with  his  own,  the  Earth 
was  got  cleared  of  them. 

Another  version  is,  that  Edmund  on  this  and  the  like  occasions 
stood  by  his  order  ;  the  oldest,  and  indeed  only  true  order  of  No- 
bility known  under  the  stars,  that  of  Just  Men  and  Sons  of  God, 
in  opposition  to  Unjust  and  Sons  of  Belial,  —  which  latter  indeed 
are  second-oldest,  but  yet  a  very  unvenerable  order.  This,  truly, 
seems  the  likeliest  hypothesis  of  all.  Names  and  appearances 
alter  so  strangely,  in  some  half-score  centuries  ;  and  all  fluctuates 
5* 


54  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

chameleon-like,  taking  now  this  hue,  now  that.  Thus  much  is 
very  plain,  and  does  not  change  hue:  Landlord  Edmund  was 
seen  and  felt  by  all  men  to  have  done  verily  a  man's  part  in  this 
life-pilgrimage  of  his  ;  and  benedictions,  and  outflowing  love  and 
admiration  from  the  universal  heart,  were  his  meed.  Well-done  ! 
Well-done !  cried  the  hearts  of  all  men.  They  raised  his  slain 
and  martyred  body  ;  washed  its  wounds  with  fast-flowing  univer- 
sal tears  ;  tears  of  endless  pity,  and  yet  of  a  sacred  joy  and 
triumph.  The  beautifullest  kind  of  tears,  —  indeed  perhaps  the 
beautifullest  kind  of  thing  :  like  a  sky  all  flashing  diamonds  and 
prismatic  radiance  ;  all  weeping,  yet  shone  on  by  the  everlasting 
Sun:  —  and  this  is  not  a  sky,  it  is  a  Soul  and  living  Face! 
Nothing  liker  the  Temple  of  the  Highest,  bright  with  some  real 
effulgence  of  the  Highest,  is  seen  in  this  world. 

O,  if  all  Yankee-land  follow  a  small  good  ■  Schniispel  the  dis- 
tinguished Novelist '  with  blazing  torches,  dinner-invitations,  uni- 
versal hep-hep-hurrah,  feeling  that  he,  though  small,  is  some- 
thing ;  how  might  all  Angle-land  once  follow  a  hero-martyr  and 
great  true  Son  of  Heaven  !  It  is  the  very  joy  of  man's  heart  to 
admire,  where  he  can  ;  nothing  so  lifts  him  from  all  his  mean 
imprisonments,  were  it  but  for  moments,  as  true  admiration.  Thus 
it  has  been  said,  '  all  men,  especially  all  women,  are  born  wor- 
shippers;' and  will  worship,  if  it  be  but  possible.  Possible  to 
worship  a  Something,  even  a  small  one  ;  not  so  possible  a  mere 
loud-blaring  Nothing  !  What  sight  is  more  pathetic  than  that  of 
poor  multitudes  of  persons  met  to  gaze  at  King's  Progresses, 
Lord  Mayor's  Shews,  and  other  gilt-gingerbread  phenomena  of 
the  worshipful  sort,  in  these  times  ;  each  so  eager  to  worship ; 
each,  with  a  dim  fatal  sense  of  disappointment,  finding  that  he 
cannot  rightly  here  !  These  be  thy  gods,  O  Israel  1  And  thou 
art  so  willing  to  worship,  —  poor  Israel  ! 

In  this  manner,  however,  did  the  men  of  the  Eastern  Counties 
take  up  the  slain  body  of  their  Edmund,  where  it  lay  cast  forth  in 
the  village  of  Hoxne  ;  seek  out  the  severed  head,  and  reverently 
reunite  the  same.  They  embalmed  him  with  myrrh  and  sweet 
spices,  with  love,  pity,  and  all  high  and  awful  thoughts  ;  conse- 
crating him  with  a  very  storm  of  melodious  adoring  admiration, 
and  sun-dyed  showers  of  tears  ;  — joyfully,  yet  with  awe  (as  all 


LANDLORD    EDMUND.  55 

deep  joy  has  something-  of  the  awful  in  it),  commemorating  ]iis 
noble  deeds  and  godlike  walk  and  conversation  while  on  Earth. 
Till,  at  length,  the  very  Pope  and  Cardinals  at  Rome  were  forced 
to  hear  of  it ;  and  they,  summing  up  as  correctly  as  they  well 
could,  with  Advocatus-Diaboli  pleadings  and  their  other  forms  of 
process,  the  general  verdict  of  mankind,  declared  :  That  he  had, 
in  very  fact,  led  a  hero's  life  in  this  world  ;  and  being  now  gone, 
was  gone  as  they  conceived  to  God  above,  and  reaping  his  reward 
there.  Such,  they  said,  was  the  best  judgment  they  could  form 
of  the  case;  —  and  truly  not  a  bad  judgment.  Acquiesced  in, 
zealously  adopted,  with  full  assent  of  '  private  judgment,'  by  all 
mortals. 

The  rest  of  St.  Edmund's  history,  for  the  reader  sees  he  has 
now  become  a  Saint,  is  easily  conceivable.  Pious  munificence 
provided  him  a  loculus,  a  feretrum  or  shrine  ;  built  for  him  a 
wooden  chapel,  a  stone  temple,  ever  widening  and  growing  by  new 
pious  gifts  ;  —  such  the  overflowing  heart  feels  it  a  blessedness  to 
solace  itself  by  giving.  St.  Edmund's  Shrine  glitters  now  wTith 
diamond  flowerages,  with  a  plating  of  wrought  gold.  The  wooden 
chapel,  as  we  say,  has  become  a  stone  temple.  Stately  masonries, 
long-drawn  arches,  cloisters,  sounding  aisles  buttress  it,  begirdle 
it  far  and  wide.  Regimented  companies  of  men,  of  whom  our 
Jocelin  is  one,  devote  themselves,  in  every  generation,  to  meditate 
here  on  man's  Nobleness  and  Awfulness,  and  celebrate  and  shew 
forth  the  same,  as  they  best  can,  —  thinking  they  will  do  it  better 
here,  in  presence  of  God  the  Maker,  and  of  the  so  Awful  and 
so  Noble  made  by  Him.  In  one  word,  St.  Edmund's  Body  has 
raised  a  Monastery  round  it.  To  such  length,  in  such  manner, 
has  the  Spirit  of  the  Time  visibly  taken  body,  and  crystallised 
itself  here.  New  gifts,  houses,  farms,  katalla  *  —  come  ever  in. 
King  Knut.  whom  men  call  Canute,  whom  the  Ocean-tide  would 
not  be  forbidden  to  wet,  —  we  heard  already  of  this  wise  King, 
with  his  crown  and  gifts;  but  of  many  others,  Kings,  Queens, 
wise  men  and  noble  loyal  women,  let  Dryasdust  and  divine  Silence 

*  Goods,  properties  ;  what  we  now  call  chattels,  and  still  more  singularly 
cattle,  says  my  erudite  friend  ! 


56  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

be  the  record  !    Beodric's- Worth  has  become  St.  Edmund's  Bury ; 

—  and  lasts  visible  to  this  hour.  All  this  that  thou  now  seest, 
and  namest  Bury  Town,  is  properly  the  Funeral  Monument  of 
Saint  or  Landlord  Edmund.  The  present  respectable  Mayor  of 
Bury  may  be  said,  like  a  Fakeer  (little  as  he  thinks  of  it),  to  have 
his  dwelling  in  the  extensive,  many-sculptured  Tombstone  of  St. 
Edmund  ;  in  one  of  the  brick  niches  thereof  dwells  the  present 
respectable  Mayor  of  Bury. 

Certain  Times  do  crystallise  themselves  in  a  magnificent  man- 
ner ;  and  others,  perhaps,  are  like  to  do  it  in  rather  a  shabby  one  ! 

—  But  Richard  Arkwright  too  will  have  his  Monument,  a  thousand 
years  hence  :  all  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire,  and  how  many  other 
shires  and  countries,  with  their  machineries  and  industries,  for  his 
monument!  A  true  jtw/ramid  or  '^/fame-mountain,'  flaming  with 
steam  fires  and  useful  labour  over  wide  continents,  usefully  towards 
the  Stars,  to  a  certain  height; — how  much  grander  than  your 
foolish  Cheops  Pyramids  or  Sakhara  clay  ones !  Let  us  withal  be 
hopeful,  be  content  or  patient. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


ABBOT    HUGO. 


It  is  true,  all  things  have  two  faces,  a  light  one  and  a  dark.  It 
is  true,  in  three  centuries  much  imperfection  accumulates  ;  many 
an  Ideal,  monastic  or  other,  shooting  forth  into  practice  as  it  can, 
grows  to  a  strange  enough  Reality  ;  and  we  have  to  ask  with 
amazement,  Is  this  your  Ideal !  For,  alas,  the  Ideal  always  has 
to  grow  in  the  Real,  and  to  seek  out  its  bed  and  board  there,  often 
in  a  very  sorry  way.  No  beautifullest  Poet  is  a  Bird-of-Paradise, 
living  on  perfumes ;  sleeping"  in  the  aether  with  outspread  wings. 
The  Heroic,  independent  of  bed  and  board,  is  found  in  Drury-Lane 
Theatre  only  ;  to  avoid  disappointments,  let  us  bear  this  in  mind. 
By  the  law  of  Nature,  too,  all  manner  of  Ideals  have  their  fatal 
limits  and  lot  ;  their  appointed  periods,  of  youth,  of  maturity  or 
perfection,  of  decline,  degradation,  and  final  death  and  disappear- 
ance. There  is  nothing  born  but  has  to  die.  Ideal  monasteries, 
once  grown  real,  do  seek  bed  and  board  in  this  world  ;  do  find  it 
more  and  more  successfully  ;  do  get  at  length  too  intent  on  find- 
ing it,  exclusively  intent  on  that.  They  are  then  like  diseased 
corpulent  bodies  fallen  idiotic,  which  merely  eat  and  sleep  ;  ready 
for  '  dissolution,'  by  a  Henry  the  Eighth  or  some  other.  Joce- 
lin's  St.  Edmundsbury  is  still  far  from  this  last  dreadful  state  : 
but  here  too  the  reader  will  prepare  himself  to  see  an  Ideal  not 
sleeping  in  the  eether  like  a  bird-of-paradise,  but  roosting  as  the 
common  woodfowl  do,  in  an  imperfect,  uncomfortable,  more  or 
less  contemptible  manner  !  — 

Abbot  Hugo,  as  Jocelin,  breaking  at  once  into  the  heart  of  the 
business,  apprises  us,  had  in  those  days  grown  old,  grown  rather 
blind,  and  his  eyes  were  somewhat  darkened,  aliquantulum  cali- 
gaverunt  oculi  ejus.     He  dwelt  apart  very  much,  in  his  Talamus 


58  THE    ANClEx\T    MONK. 

or  peculiar  Chamber  ;  got  into  the  hands  of  flatterers,  a  set  of 
mealy-mouthed  persons  who  strove  to  make  the  passing  hour  easy 
for  him,  —  for  him  easy,  and  for  themselves  profitable  ;  accumu- 
lating in  the  distance  mere  mountains  of  confusion.  Old  Dominus 
Hugo  sat  inaccessible  in  this  way,  far  in  the  interior,  wrapt  in  his 
warm  flannels  and  delusions  ;  inaccessible  to  all  voice  of  Fact ; 
and  bad  grew  ever  worse  with  us.  Not  that  our  worthy  old 
Dominus  Abbas  was  inattentive  to  the  divine  offices,  or  to  the 
maintenance  of  a  devout  spirit  in  us  or  in  himself;  but  the  Ac- 
count-Books of  the  Convent  fell  into  the  frightfullest  state,  and 
Hugo's  annual  Budget  grew  yearly  emptier,  or  filled  with  futile 
expectations,  fatal  deficit,  wind  and  debts  ! 

His  one  worldly  care  was  to  raise  ready  money ;  sufficient  for 
the  day  is  the  evil  thereof.  And  how  he  raised  it :  From  usurious 
insatiable  Jews ;  every  fresh  Jew  sticking  on  him  like  a  fresh 
horseleech,  sucking  his  and  our  life  out ;  crying  continually,  Give, 
Give !  Take  one  example  instead  of  scores.  Our  Camera  having 
fallen  into  ruin,  William  the  Sacristan  received  charge  to  repair 
it ;  strict  charge,  but  no  money  ;  Abbot  Hugo  would,  and  indeed 
could,  give  him  no  fraction  of  money.  The  Camera  in  ruins,  and 
Hugo  penniless  and  inaccessible,  Willelmus  Sacrista  borrowed 
Forty  Marcs  (some  Seven-and-twenty  Pounds)  of  Benedict  the 
Jew,  and  patched  up  our  Camera  again.  But  the  means  of  repay- 
ing him  ?  There  were  no  means.  Hardly  could  Sacrista,  Cellera- 
rius,  or  any  public  officer \  get  ends  to  meet,  on  the  indispen- 
sablest  scale,  with  their  shrunk  allowances :  ready  money  had 
vanished. 

Benedict's  Twenty-seven  pounds  grew  rapidly  at  compound- 
interest  ;  and  at  length,  when  it  had  amounted  to  One  hundred 
pounds,  he,  on  a  day  of  settlement,  presents  the  account  to  Hugo 
himself.  Hugo  already  owed  him  another  One  hundred  of  his 
own ;  and  so  here  it  has  become  Two  hundred  !  Hugo,  in  a  fine 
frenzy,  threatens  to  depose  the  Sacristan,  to  do  this  and  do  that ; 
but,  in  the  mean  while,  How  to  quiet  your  insatiable  Jew  ?  Hugo, 
for  this  couple  of  hundreds,  grants  the  Jew  his  bond  for  Four 
hundred  payable  at  the  end  of  four  years.  At  the  end  of  four 
years  there  is,  of  course,  still  no  money  ;  and  the  Jew  now  gets 
a  bond  for  Eight  hundred  and  eighty  pounds,  to  be  paid  by  instal- 


ABBOT    HUGO.  59 

merits,  Four-score  pounds  every  year.     Here  was  a  way  of  doing 
business ! 

Neither  yet  is  this  insatiable  Jew  satisfied  or  settled  with  :  he 
had  papers  against  us  of  '  small  debts  fourteen  years  old ;  '  his 
modest  claim  amounts  finally  to  '  Twelve  hundred  pounds  besides 
interest ;  '  —  and  one  hopes  he  never  got  satisfied  in  this  world  ; 
one  almost  hopes  he  was  one  of  those  beleaguered  Jews  who 
hanged  themselves  in  York  Castle  shortly  afterwards,  and  had  his 
usances  and  quittances  and  horseleech  papers  summarily  set  fire 
to  !  For  approximate  justice  will  strive  to  accomplish  itself ;  if 
not  in  one  way,  then  in  another.  Jews,  and  also  Christians  and 
Heathens,  who  accumulate  in  this  manner,  though  furnished 
with  never  so  many  parchments,  do,  at  times,  '  get  their  grinder- 
teeth  successively  pulled  out  of  their  head,  each  day  a  new  grind- 
er,' till  they  consent  to  disgorge  again.  A  sad  fact,  —  worth  re- 
flecting on. 

Jocelin,  we  see,  is  not  without  secularity  :  Our  Dominus  Ab- 
bas was  intent  enough  on  the  divine  offices  ;  but  then  his  Account 
Books  —  ?  — One  of  the  things  that  strike  us  most,  throughout, 
in  Jocelin's  Chronicle,  and  indeed  in  Eadmer's  A?iselm,  and  other 
old  monastic  Books,  written  evidently  by  pious  men,  is  this,  That 
there  is  almost  no  mention  whatever  of  '  personal  religion '  in 
them  ;  that  the  whole  gist  of  their  thinking  and  speculation  seems 
to  be  the  '  privileges  of  our  order,'  '  strict  exaction  of  our  dues,' 
1  God's  honour '  (meaning  the  honour  of  our  Saint),  and  so  forth. 
Is  not  this  singular?  A  body  of  men,  set  apart  for  perfecting  and 
purifying  their  own  souls,  do  not  seem  disturbed  about  that  in 
any  measure  :  the  '  Ideal '  says  nothing  about  its  idea ;  says  much 
about  finding  bed  and  board  for  itself!     How  is  this  ? 

Why,  for  one  thing,  bed  and  board  are  a  matter  very  apt  to 
come  to  speech  :  it  is  much  easier  to  speak  of  them  than  of  ideas  ; 
and  they  are  sometimes  much  more  pressing  with  some  !  Nay, 
for  another  thing,  may  not  this  religious  reticence,  in  these  devout 
good  souls,  be  perhaps  a  merit,  and  sign  of  health  in  them  ?  Jo- 
celin, Eadmer,  and  such  religious  men,  have  as  yet  nothing  of 
'  Methodism  ;  '  no  Doubt  or  even  root  of  Doubt.  Religion  is  not 
a  diseased  self-introspection,  an  agonising  inquiry  :  their  duties 


60  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

are  clear  to  them,  the  way  of  supreme  good  plain,  indisputable, 
and  they  are  travelling  on  it.  Religion  lies  over  them  like  an  all- 
embracing  heavenly  canopy,  like  an  atmosphere  and  life-element, 
which  is  not  spoken  of,  which  in  all  things  is  presupposed  with- 
out speech.  Is  not  serene  or  complete  Religion  the  highest  aspect 
of  human  nature  ;  as  serene  Cant,  or  complete  No-religion,  is  the 
lowest  and  miserablest  ?  Between  which  two,  all  manner  of 
earnest  Methodisms,  introspections,  agonising  inquiries,  never  so 
morbid,  shall  play  their  respective  parts,  not  without  approbation. 

But  let  any  reader  fancy  himself  one  of  the  Brethren  in  St. 
Edmundsbury  Monastery  under  such  circumstances  !  How  can  a 
Lord  Abbot,  all  stuck  over  with  horseleeches  of  this  nature,  front 
the  world  ?  He  is  fast  losing  his  life-blood,  and  the  Convent  will 
be  as  one  of  Pharaoh's  lean  kine.  Old  monks  of  experience  draw 
their  hoods  deeper  down  ;  careful  what  they  say  :  the  monk's  first 
duty  is  obedience.  Our  Lord  the  King,  hearing  of  such  work, 
sends  down  his  Almoner  to  make  investigations  :  but  what  boots 
it?  Abbot  Hugo  assembles  us  in  Chapter;  asks,  "  If  there  is 
any  complaint  ?  "  Not  a  soul  of  us  dare  answer,  "Yes,  thou- 
sands !  "  but  we  all  stand  silent,  and  the  Prior  even  says  that 
things  are  in  a  very  comfortable  condition.  Whereupon  old  Abbot 
Hugo,  turning  to  the  royal  messenger,  says,  "  You  see  !  "  — 
and  the  business  terminates  in  that  way.  I,  as  a  briskeyed,  no- 
ticing youth  and  novice,  could  not  help  asking  of  the  elders,  ask- 
ing of  Magister  Samson  in  particular  :  Why  he,  well-instructed 
and  a  knowing  man,  had  not  spoken  out,  and  brought  matters  to 
a  bearing?  Magister  Samson  was  Teacher  of  the  Novices,  ap- 
pointed to  breed  us  up  to  the  rules,  and  I  loved  him  well.  "  Fill 
mi"  answered  Samson,  "the  burnt  child  shuns  the  fire.  Dost 
thou  not  know,  our  Lord  the  Abbot  sent  me  once  to  Acre  in  Nor- 
folk, to  solitary  confinement  and  bread  and  water,  already?  The 
Hinghams,  Hugo  and  Robert,  have  just  got  home  from  banish- 
ment for  speaking.  This  is  the  hour  of  darkness  :  the  hour  when 
flatterers  rule  and  are  believed.  Vidcat  Dominus,  let  the  Lord 
see,  and  judge." 

In  very  truth  what  could  poor  old  Abbot  Hugo  do  ?  A  frail  old 
man;  and  the  Philistines  were  upon  him, — that  is  to  say,  the 


ABBOT    HUGO.  61 

Hebrews.  He  had  nothing  for  it  but  to  shrink  away  from  them  ; 
get  back  into  his  warm  flannels,  into  his  warm  delusions  again. 
Happily  before  it  was  quite  too  late,  he  bethought  him  of  pilgrim- 
ing  to  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury.  He  set  out,  with  a  fit  train, 
in  the  autumn  days  of  the  year  1180  ;  near  Rochester  City,  his 
mule  threw  him,  dislocated  his  poor  kneepan,  raised  incurable  in- 
flammatory fever  ;  and  the  poor  old  man  got  his  dismissal  from 
the  whole  coil  at  once.  St.  Thomas  a  Becket,  though  in  a  circu- 
itous way,  had  brought  deliverance  !  Neither  Jew  usurers,  nor 
grumbling  monks,  nor  other  importunate  despicability  of  men  or 
mud-elements  afflicted  Abbot  Hugo  more  ;  but  he  dropt  his  rosa- 
ries, closed  his  account-books,  closed  his  old  eyes,  and  lay  down 
into  the  long  sleep.  Heavy-laden  hoary  old  Dominus  Hugo,  fare 
thee  well. 

One  thing  we  cannot  mention  without  a  due  thrill  of  horror  : 
namely,  that,  in  the  empty  exchequer  of  Dominus  Hugo,  there 
was  not  found  one  penny  to  distribute  to  the  Poor  that  they  might 
pray  for  his  soul !  By  a  kind  of  godsend,  Fifty  shillings  did,  in 
the  very  nick  of  time,  fall  due,  or  seem  to  fall  due,  from  one  of 
his  Farmers  (the  Firmarius  de  Palegrava) ,  and  he  paid  it,  and  the 
Poor  had  it ;  though,  alas,  this  too  only  seemed  to  fall  due,  and  we 
had  it  to  pay  again  afterwards.  Dominus  Hugo's  apartments 
were  plundered  by  his  servants,  to  the  last  portable  stool,  in  a  few 
minutes  after  the  breath  was  out  of  his  body.  Forlorn  old  Hugo, 
fare  thee  well  forever. 


CHAPTER   V. 


TWELFTH    CENTURY. 


Our  Abbot  being  dead,  the  Dominus  Rex,  Henry  II.,  or  Ranulf 
de  Glanvill  Justiciarius  of  England  for  him,  set  Inspectors  or  Cus- 
todiars  over  us  ;  —  not  in  any  breathless  haste  to  appoint  a  new 
Abbot,  our  revenues  coming  into  his  own  Scaccarium,  or  royal 
Exchequer,  in  the  meanwhile.  They  proceeded  with  some  rigour, 
these  Custodiars ;  took  written  inventories,  clapt-on  seals,  exacted 
everywhere  strict  tale  and  measure  :  but  wherefore  should  a  living 
monk  complain  1  The  living  monk  has  to  do  his  devotional  drill- 
exercise  ;  consume  his  allotted  pitantia,  what  we  call  pittance,  or 
ration  of  victual ;  and  possess  his  soul  in  patience. 

Dim,  as  through  a  long  vista  of  Seven  Centuries,  dim  and  very 
strange  looks  that  monk-life  to  us  ;  the  ever-surprising  circum- 
stance this,  That  it  is  a  fact  and  no  dream,  that  we  see  it  there, 
and  gaze  into  the  very  eyes  of  it !  Smoke  rises  daily  from  those 
culinary  chimney  -throats ;  there  are  living  human  beings  there, 
who  chant,  loud-braying,  their  matins,  nones,  vespers  ;  awakening 
echoes,  not  to  the  bodily  ear  alone.  St.  Edmund's  Shrine,  per- 
petually illuminated,  glows  ruddy  through  the  Night,  and  through 
the  Night  of  Centuries  withal ;  St.  Edmundsbury  Town  paying 
yearly  Forty  pounds  for  that  express  end.  Bells  clang  out ;  on 
great  occasions,  all  the  bells.  We  have  Processions,  Preachings, 
Festivals,  Christmas  Plays,  Mysteries  shewn  in  the  Churchyard, 
at  which  latter  the  Townsfolk  sometimes  quarrel.  Time  was, 
Time  is,  as  Friar  Bacon's  Bass  Head*  remarked;  and  withal 
Time  will  be.  There  are  three  Tenses,  Tempora,  or  Times  ;  and 
there  is  one  Eternity  ;  and  as  for  us, 

We  are  such  stuff  as  Dreams  are  made  of ! 

*  Brass  Head,  I  suppose  1 


TWELFTH    CENTURY.  63 

Indisputable,  though  very  dim  to  modern  vision,  rests  on  its 
hill-slope  that  same  Bury,  Stoic,  or  Town  of  St.  Edmund ; 
already  a  considerable  place,  not  without  traffic,  nay  manufactures, 
would  Jocelin  only  tell  us  what.  Jocelin  is  totally  careless  of 
telling  :  but,  through  dim  fitful  apertures,  we  can  see  Fullones, 
'  Fullers,'  see  cloth-making ;  looms  dimly  going,  dye-vats,  and 
old  women  spinning  yarn.  We  have  Fairs  too,  NundincB,  in  due 
course  ;  and  the  Londoners  give  us  much  trouble,  pretending  that 
they,  as  a  metropolitan  people,  are  exempt  from  toll.  Besides 
there  is  Field-husbandry,  with  perplexed  settlement  of  Convent 
rents  :  corn-ricks  pile  themselves  within  burgh,  in  their  season  ; 
and  cattle  depart  and  enter ;  and  even  the  poor  weaver  has  his 
cow,  —  '  dungheaps  '  lying  quiet  at  most  doors  (anteforas,  says 
the  incidental  Jocelin),  for  the  Town  has  yet  no  improved  police. 
Watch  and  ward  nevertheless  we  do  keep,  and  have  Gates,  — as 
what  Town  must  not ;  thieves  so  abounding  ;  war,  iverra,  such  a 
frequent  thing  !  Our  thieves,  at  the  Abbot's  judgment  bar,  deny ; 
claim  wager  of  battle ;  fight,  are  beaten,  and  then  hanged. 
f  Ketel,  the  thief,'  took  this  course  ;  and  it  did  nothing  for  him, 
—  merely  brought  us,  and  indeed  himself,  new  trouble  ! 

Every  way  a  most  foreign  Time.  What  difficulty,  for  example, 
has  our  Cellerarius  to  collect  the  repselver,  '  reaping  silver,'  or 
penny,  which  each  householder  is  by  law  bound  to  pay  for  cutting 
down  the  Convent  grain  !  Richer  people  pretend  that  it  is  com- 
muted, that  it  is  this  and  the  other  ;  that,  in  short,  they  will  not 
pay  it.  Our  Cellerarius  gives  up  calling  on  the  rich.  In  the 
houses  of  the  poor,  our  Cellerarius  finding,  in  like  manner,  neither 
penny  nor  good  promise,  snatches,  without  ceremony,  what 
vadium  (pledge,  wad)  he  can  come  at :  a  joint-stool,  kettle,  nay 
the  very  house-door,  '  hostium ;  '  and  old  women,  thus  exposed  to 
the  unfeeling  gaze  of  the  public,  rush  out  after  him  with  their 
distaffs  and  the  angriest  shrieks  :  '  vetulce  exibant  cum  colis  suis? 
says  Jocelin,  '  minantes  et  exprobrantes .' 

What  a  historical  picture,  glowing  visible,  as  St.  Edmund's 
Shrine  by  night,  after  Seven  long  Centuries  or  so  !  Vetulce  cum 
colis  :  My  venerable  ancient  spinning  grandmothers,  —  ah,  and  ye 
too  have  to  shriek,  and  rush  out  with  your  distaffs ;  and  become 
Female  Chartists,  and  scold   all  evening  with  void  doorway  ;  — ■ 


64  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

and  in  old  Saxon,  as  we  in  modern,  would  fain  demand  some 
Five-point  Charter,  could  it  be  fallen  in  with,  the  Earth  being  too 
tyrannous !  —  Wise  Lord  Abbots,  hearing  of  such  phenomena, 
did  in  time  abolish  or  commute  the  reap-penny,  and  one  nuisance 
was  abated.  But  the  image  of  these  justly  offended  old  women, 
in  their  old  wool  costumes,  with  their  angry  features,  and  spindles 
brandished,  lives  forever  in  the  historical  memory.  Thanks  to 
thee,  Jocelin  Boswell.  Jerusalem  was  taken  by  the  Crusaders, 
and  again  lost  by  them  ;  and  Richard  Coeur-de-Lion  '  veiled  his 
face  '  as  he  passed  in  sight  of  it :  but  how  many  other  things  went 
on,  the  while  ! 

Thus,  too,  our  trouble  with  the  Lakenheath  eels  is  very  great. 
King  Knut,  namely,  or  rather  his  Queen  who  also  did  herself 
honour  by  honouring  St.  Edmund,  decreed  by  authentic  deed  yet 
extant  on  parchment,  that  the  Holders  of  the  Town  Fields,  once 
Beodric's,  should,  for  one  thing,  go  yearly  and  catch  us  four 
thousand  eels  in  the  marsh-pools  of  Lakenheath.  Well,  they 
went,  they  continued  to  go  ;  but,  in  later  times,  got  into  the  way 
of  returning  with  a  most  short  account  of  eels.  Not  the  due  six- 
score  apiece;  no,  Here  are  two-score,  Here  are  twenty,  ten, — 
sometimes,  Here  are  none  at  all ;  Heaven  help  us,  we  could  catch 
no  more,  they  were  not  there  !  What  is  a  distressed  Cellerarius 
to  do  ?  We  agree  that  each  Holder  of  so  many  acres  shall  pay 
one  penny  yearly,  and  let  go  the  eels  as  too  slippery.  But  alas, 
neither  is  this  quite  effectual  :  the  Fields,  in  my  time,  have  got 
divided  among  so  many  hands,  there  is  no  catching  of  them  either  ; 
I  have  known  our  Cellarer  get  seven  and  twenty  pence  formerly, 
and  now  it  is  much  if  he  get  ten  pence  farthing  (vix  decern  dena- 
rios  et  obolum.)  And  then  their  sheep,  which  they  are  bound  to 
fold  nightly  in  our  pens,  for  the  manure's  sake ;  and,  I  fear,  do 
not  always  fold :  and  their  aver-pennies,  and  their  avragiums, 
and  their  foder-corns,  and  mill-and-market  dues !  Thus,  in  its 
undeniable  but  dim  manner,  does  old  St.  Edmundsbury  spin  and 
till,  and  laboriously  keep  its  pot  boiling,  and  St.  Edmund's  Shrine 
lighted,  under  such  conditions  and  averages  as  it  can. 

How  much  is  still  alive  in  England ;  how  much  has  not  yet 
come  into  life  !     A  Feudal  Aristocracy  is  still  alive,  in  the  prime 


TWELFTH    CENTURY.  65 

of  life  ;  superintending  the  cultivation  of  the  land,  and  less  con- 
sciously the  distribution  of  the  produce  of  the  land,  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  quarrels  of  the  land ;  judging,  soldiering,  adjusting  ; 
everywhere  governing  the  people,  —  so  that  even  a  Gurth  born 
thrall  of  Cedric  lacks  not  his  due  parings  of  the  pigs  he  tends. 
Governing  ;  —  and,  alas,  also  game-preserving,  so  that  a  Robert 
Hood,  a  William  Scarlet  and  others  have,  in  these  days,  put  on 
Lincoln  coats,  and  taken  to  living,  in  some  universal-suffrage 
manner,  under  the  greenwood  tree  ! 

How  silent,  on  the  other  hand,  lie  all  Cotton-trades  and  such 
like ;  not  a  steeple-chimney  yet  got  on  end  from  sea  to  sea ! 
North  of  the  Humber,  a  stern  Willelmus  Conquestor  burnt  the 
Country,  finding  it  unruly,  into  very  stern  repose.  Wild  fowl 
scream  in  those  ancient  silences,  wild  cattle  roam  in  those  ancient 
solitudes ;  the  scanty  sulky  Norse-bred  population  all  coerced 
into  silence,  —  feeling  that,  under  these  new  Norman  Governors, 
their  history  has  probably  as  good  as  ended.  Men  and  Northum- 
brian Norse  populations  know  little  what  has  ended,  what  is  but 
beginning!  The  Ribble  and  the  Aire  roll  down,  as  yet  unpol- 
luted by  dyers'  chemistry  ;  tenanted  by  merry  trouts  and  pisca- 
tory otters  ;  the  sunbeam  and  the  vacant  wind's-blast  alone  tra- 
versing those  moors.  Side  by  side  sleep  the  coal-strata  and  the 
iron-strata  for  so  many  ages ;  no  Steam-Demon  has  yet  risen 
smoking  into  being.  Saint  Mungo  rules  in  Glasgow  ;  James 
Watt  still  slumbering  in  the  deep  of  Time.  Mancunium,  Man- 
ceaster,  what  we  now  call  Manchester,  spins  no  cotton,  — if  it  be 
not  wool  '  cottons,'  clipped  from  the  backs  of  mountain  sheep. 
The  Creek  of  the  Mersey  gurgles,  twice  in  the  four-and-twenty 
hours,  with  eddying  brine,  clangorous  with  sea- fowl ;  and  is  a 
Lither-P oo\,  a  lazy  or  sullen  Pool,  no  monstrous  pitchy  City,  and 
Seahaven  of  the  world  !  The  Centuries  are  big  ;  and  the  birth- 
hour  is  coming,  not  yet  come.  Tempusferacc,  tempus  edax  rerum. 
6* 


CHAPTER   VI. 


MONK  SAMSON. 


Within  doors,  down  at  the  hill-foot,  in  our  Convent  here,  we 
are  a  peculiar  people,  —  hardly  conceivable  in  the  Arkwright 
Corn-Law  ages,  of  mere  Spinning-Mills  and  Joe-Mantons  !  There 
is  yet  no  Methodism  among  us,  and  we  speak  much  of  Seculari- 
ties  :  no  Methodism ;  our  Religion  is  not  yet  a  horrible  restless 
Doubt,  still  less  a  far  horribler  composed  Cant ;  but  a  great  hea- 
ven-high Unquestionability,  encompassing,  interpenetrating  the 
whole  of  Life.  Imperfect  as  we  may  be,  we  are  here,  with  our 
litanies,  shaven  crowns,  vows  of  poverty,  to  testify  incessantly  and 
indisputably  to  every  heart,  That  this  Earthly  Life,  and  its  riches 
and  possessions,  and  good  and  evil  hap,  are  not  intrinsically  a  leal- 
ity  at  all,  but  are  a  shadow  of  realities  eternal,  infinite  ;  that  this 
Time-world,  as  an  air-image,  fearfully  emblematic,  plays  and  flick- 
ers in  the  grand  still  mirror  of  Eternity  ;  and  man's  little  Life  has 
Duties  that  are  great,  that  are  alone  great,  and  go  up  to  Heaven 
and  down  to  Hell.  This,  with  our  poor  litanies,  we  testify  and 
struggle  to  testify. 

Which,  testified  or  not,  remembered  by  all  men,  or  forgotten 
by  all  men,  does  verily  remain  the  fact,  even  in  Arkwright  Joe- 
Manton  ages !  But  it  is  incalculable,  when  litanies  have  grown 
obsolete  ;  when  foder  corns,  avragiums,  and  all  human  dues  and 
reciprocities  have  been  fully  changed  into  one  great  due  of  cash 
payment ;  and  man's  duty  to  man  reduces  itself  to  handing  him 
certain  metal  coins,  or  covenanted  money-wages,  and  then  shoving 
him  out  of  doors  ;  and  man's  duty  to  God  becomes  a  cant,  a  doubt, 
a  dim  inanity,  a  '  pleasure  of  virtue  '  or  such  like  ;  and  the  thing 
a  man  does  infinitely  fear  (the  real  Hell  of  a  man)  is  '  that  he  do 
not  make  money  and  advance  himself,'  —  I  say,  it  is  incalculable 
what  a  change  has  introduced  itself  everywhere  into  human  af- 
fairs !     How  human  affairs  shall  now  circulate  everywhere  not 


MONK    SAMSON.  67 

healthy  life-blood  in  them,  but,  as  it  were,  a  detestable  copperas 
banker's  ink  ;  and  all  is  grown  acrid,  divisive,  threatening  dissolu- 
tion ;  and  the  huge  tumultuous  Life  of  Society  is  galvanic,  devil- 
ridden,  too  truly  possessed  by  a  devil !  For,  in  short,  Mammon  is 
not  a  god  at  all ;  but  a  devil,  and  even  a  very  despicable  devil. 
Follow  the  Devil  faithfully,  you  are  sure  enough  to  go  to  the 
Devil :  whither  else  can  you  go  1  —  In  such  situations,  men  look 
back  with  a  kind  of  mournful  recognition  even  on  poor  limited 
Monk-figures,  with  their  poor  litanies  ;  and  reflect,  with  Ben  Jon- 
son,  that  soul  is  indispensable,  some  degree  of  soul,  even  to  save 
you  the  expense  of  salt !  — 

For  the  rest,  it  must  be  owned,  we  Monks  of  St.  Edmundsbury 
are  but  a  limited  class  of  creatures,  and  seem  to  have  a  somewhat 
dull  life  of  it.  Much  given  to  idle  gossip  ;  having  indeed  no  other 
work,  when  our  chanting  is  over.  Listless  gossip,  for  most  part, 
and  a  mitigated  slander ;  the  fruit  of  idleness,  not  of  spleen.  We 
are  dull,  insipid  men,  many  of  us  ;  easy-minded  ;  whom  prayer 
and  digestion  of  food  will  avail  for  a  life.  We  have  to  receive  all 
strangers  in  our  Convent,  and  lodge  them  gratis  ;  such  and  such 
sorts  go  by  rule  to  the  Lord  Abbot  and  his  special  revenues ;  such 
and'  such  to  us  and  our  poor  Cellarer,  however  straitened.  Jews 
themselves  send  their  wives  and  little  ones  hither  in  war-time, 
into  our  Pitanceria  ;  where  they  abide  safe,  with  due  pittances, — 
for  a  consideration.  We  have  the  fairest  chances  for  collecting 
news.  Some  of  us  have  a  turn  for  reading  Books  ;  for  medita- 
tion, silence  ;  at  times  we  even  write  Books.  Some  of  us  can 
preach,  in  English-Saxon,  in  Norman  French,  and  even  in  Monk- 
Latin  ;  others  cannot  in  any  language  or  jargon,  being  stupid. 

Failing  all  else,  what  gossip  about  one  another  !  This  is  a  pe- 
rennial resource.  How  one  hooded  head  applies  itself  to  the  ear 
of  another,  and  whispers — tacenda.  Willelmus  Sacrista,  for  in- 
stance, what  does  he  nightly,  over  in  that  Sacristry  of  his  1  Fre- 
quent bibations,  ' frequentes  bibationes  et  qucedam  tacenda,' — 
eheu  !  We  have  '  tempora  minutionis ,'  stated  seasons  of  blood- 
letting, when  we  are  all  let  blood  together  ;  and  then  there  is  a 
general  free-conference,  a  sanhedrim  of  clatter.  For  all  our  vow 
of  poverty,  we  can  by  rule  amass  to  the  extent  of '  two  shillings  ;  ' 
but  it  is  to  be  given  to  our  necessitous  kindred,  or  in  charity. 


68  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

Poor  Monks !  Thus  too  a  certain  Canterbury  Monk  was  in  the 
habit  of '  slipping,  clanculo  from  his  sleeve,'  five  shillings  into  the 
hand  of  his  mother,  when  she  came  to  see  him,  at  the  divine  of- 
fices, every  two  months.  Once,  slipping  the  money  clandestinely, 
just  in  the  act  of  taking  leave,  he  slipt  it  not  into  her  hand  but  on 
the  floor,  and  another  had  it ;  whereupon  the  poor  Monk,  coming 
to  know  it,  looked  mere  despair  for  some  days  ;  till  Lanfranc  the 
noble  Archbishop,  questioning  his  secret  from  him,  nobly  made 
the  sum  seven  shillings,*  and  said,  Never  mind  ! 

One  Monk  of  a  taciturn  nature  distinguishes  himself  among 
these  babbling  ones  :  the  name  of  him  Samson  ;  he  that  answered 
Jocelin,  "  Fill  mi,  a  burnt  child  shuns  the  fire."  They  call  him 
'  Norfolk  Barrator ,'  or  litigious  person  ;  for  indeed,  being  of 
grave  taciturn  ways,  he  is  not  universally  a  favourite  ;  he  has 
been  in  trouble  more  than  once.  The  reader  is  desired  to  mark 
this  Monk.  A  personable  man  of  seven-aud-forty  ;  stout-made, 
stands  erect  as  a  pillar ;  with  bushy  eyebrows,  the  eyes  of  him 
beaming  into  you  in  a  really  strange  way;  the  face  massive, 
grave,  with  '  a  very  eminent  nose  ;'  his  head  almost  bald,  its 
auburn  remnants  of  hair,  and  the  copious  ruddy  beard,  getting 
slightly  streaked  with  grey.  This  is  Brother  Samson  ;  a  man 
worth  looking  at. 

He  is  from  Norfolk,  as  the  nickname  indicates ;  from  Totting- 
ton  in  Norfolk,  as  we  guess  ;  the  son  of  poor  parents  there.  He 
has  told  me,  Jocelin,  for  I  loved  him  much,  That  once  in  his  ninth 
year  he  had  an  alarming  dream  ;  —  as  indeed  we  are  all  some- 
what given  to  dreaming  here.  Little  Samson,  lying  uneasily  in 
his  crib  at  Tottington,  dreamed  that  he  saw  the  Arch  Enemy  in 
person,  just  alighted  in  front  of  some  grand  building,  with  out- 
spread bat-wings,  and  stretching  forth  detestable  clawed  hands  to 
grip  him,  little  Samson,  and  fly  off  with  him  :  whereupon  the 
little  dreamer  shrieked  desperate  to  St.  Edmund  for  help,  shrieked 
and  again  shrieked  ;  and  St.  Edmund,  a  reverend  heavenly  figure, 
did  come,  —  and  indeed  poor  little  Samson's  mother,  awakened 
by  his  shrieking,  did  come  ;  and  the  Devil  and  the  Dream  both 

*  Eadmeri  Hist.  8. 


MONK    SAMSON.  69 

fled  away  fruitless.  On  the  morrow,  his  mother,  pondering  such 
an  awful  dream,  thought  it  were  good  to  take  him  over  to  St. 
Edmund's  own  Shrine,  and  pray  with  him  there.  See,  said  little 
Samson  at  sight  of  the  Abbey-Gate ;  see,  mother,  this  is  the 
building  I  dreamed  of!  His  poor  mother  dedicated  him  to  St. 
Edmund,  —  left  him  there  with  prayers  and  tears  :  what  better 
could  she  do?  The  exposition  of  the  dream,  Brother  Samson 
used  to  say,  was  this  :  Diabolus  with  outspread  bat-wings  shad- 
owed forth  the  pleasures  of  this  world,  volwptates  hujus  sceculi, 
which  were  about  to  snatch  and  fly  away  with  me,  had  not  St. 
Edmund  flung  his  arms  round  me,  that  is  to  say,  made  me  a  monk 
of  his.  A  monk,  accordingly,  Brother  Samson  is  ;  and  here  to 
this  day  where  his  mother  left  him.  A  learned  man,  of  devout 
grave  nature ;  has  studied  at  Paris,  has  taught  in  the  Town 
Schools  here,  and  done  much  else  ;  can  preach  in  three  languages, 
and,  like  Dr.  Caius,  '  has  had  losses  '  in  his  time.*  A  thought- 
ful, firm-standing  man ;  much  loved  by  some,  not  loved  by  all ; 
his  clear  eyes  flashing  into  you,  in  an  almost  inconvenient  way  ! 

Abbot  Hugo,  as  we  said,  had  his  own  difficulties  with  him; 
Abbot  Hugo  had  him  in  prison  once,  to  teach  him  what  authority 
was,  and  how  to  dread  the  fire  in  future.  For  Brother  Samson, 
in  the  time  of  the  Antipopes,  had  been  sent  to  Rome  on  business  ; 
and,  returning  successful,  was  too  late,  —  the  business  had  all 
misgone  in  the  interim  !  As  tours  to  Eome  are  still  frequent  with 
us  English,  perhaps  the  reader  will  not  giudge  to  look  at  the 
method  of  travelling  thither  in  those  remote  ages.  We  happily 
have,  in  small  compass,  a  personal  narrative  of  it.  Through  the 
clear  eyes  and  memory  of  Brother  Samson,  one  peeps  direct  into 
the  very  bosom  of  that  Twelfth  Century,  and  finds  it  rather  curious. 
The  actual  Papa,  Father,  or  universal  President  of  Christendom, 
as  yet  not  grown  chimerical,  sat  there;  think  of  that  only! 
Brother  Samson  went  to  Rome  as  to  the  real  Light-fountain  of 
this  lower  world  ;  we  now  —  ?  —  But  let  us  hear  Brother  Samson, 
as  to  his  mode  of  travelling  : 

*  Is  this  Dr.  Caius  iu  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor?  I  do  not  recollect 
that  anything  is  said  about  his  having  had  losses.  This  is  what  Dogberry 
says  of  himself  in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing. 


70  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

'  You  know  what  trouble  I  had  for  that  Church  of  Woolpit ; 
'  how  I  was  despatched  to  Rome  in  the  time  of  the  Schism  between 
1  Pope  Alexander  and  Octavian  ;  and  passed  through  Italy  at  that 
'  season,  when  all  clergy  carrying  letters  for  our  Lord  Pope  Alex- 
'  ander  were  laid  hold  of,  and  some  were  clapt  in  prison,  some 
'  hanged  ;  and  some,  with  nose  and  lips  cut  off,  were  sent  forward 
'  to  our  Lord  the  Pope,  for  the  disgrace  and  confusion  of  him  {in 
*  dedecus  et  confusionem  ejus).  I,  however,  pretended  to  be  Scotch, 
'  and  putting  on  the  garb  of  a  Scotchman,  and  taking  the  gesture 
'of  one,  walked  along;  and  when  anybody  mocked  at  me,  I 
t  would  brandish  my  staff  in  the  manner  of  that  weapon  they  call 
'  gaveloc*  uttering  comminatory  words  after  the  way  of  the 
'  Scotch.  To  those  that  met  and  questioned  me  who  I  was,  I 
'made  no  answer  but:  Ride,  ride  Rome;  turne  Canticereberei.] 
'  Thus  did  I,  to  conceal  myself  and  my  errand,  and  get  safer  to 
'  Rome  under  the  guise  of  a  Scotchman. 

'  Having  at  last  obtained  a  Letter  from  our  Lord  the  Pope  ac- 
'  cording  to  my  wishes,  I  turned  homewards  again.  I  had  to  pass 
'  through  a  certain  strong  town  on  my  road  ;  and  lo,  the  soldiers 
'  thereof  surrounded  me,  seizing  me,  and  saying  :  "  This  vagabond 
f  {iste  solivagus),  who  pretends  to  be  Scotch,  is  either  a  spy,  or 
'  has  Letters  from  the  false  Pope  Alexander."  And  whilst  they 
'  examined  every  stitch  and  rag  of  me,  my  leggings  {caligas) , 
'  breeches,  and  even  the  old  shoes  that  I  carried  over  my  shoulder 
'in  the  way  of  the  Scotch, — I  put  my  hand  into  the  leather 
'  scrip  I  wore,  wherein  our  Lord  the  Pope's  Letter  lay,  close  by 
'  a  little  jug  (ciffus)  I  had  for  drinking  out  of;  and  the  Lord  God 
'  so  pleasing,  and  St.  Edmund,  I  got  out  both  the  Letter  and  the 
'  jug  together ;  in  such  a  way  that,  extending  my  arm  aloft,  I 
'  held  the  Letter  hidden  between  jug  and  hand  :  they  saw  the  jug, 
'  but  the  Letter  they  saw  not.  And  thus  I  escaped  out  of  their 
'  hands  in  the  name  of  the  Lord.  Whatever  money  I  had  they 
'  took  from  me  ;  wherefore  I  had  to  beg  from  door  to  door,  with- 

*  Javelin,  missile  pike.     Gaveloc  is  still  the  Scotch  name  for  crowbar. 

i  Does  this  mean,  "  Rome  forever ;  Canterbury  not  "  (which  claims  an 
unjust  Supremacy 'over  us) !  Mr.  Rokewood  is  silent.  Dryasdust  would 
perhaps  explain  it,  —  in  the  course  of  a  week  or  two  of  talking  ;  did  one 
dare  to  question  him  ! 


MONK   SAMSON.  71 

'  out  any  payment  (sine  omni  expensa)  till  I  came  to  England 
'  again.  But  hearing  that  the  Woolpit  Church  was  already  given 
1  to  Geoffry  Ridell,  my  soul  was  struck  with  sorrow  because  I  had 
'  laboured  in  vain.  Coming  home,  therefore,  I  sat  me  down 
'secretly  under  the  Shrine  of  St.  Edmund,  fearing  lest  our  Lord 
'  Abbot  should  seize  and  imprison  me,  though  I  had  done  no  mis- 
1  chief;  nor  was  there  a  monk  who  durst  speak  to  me,  nor  a  laic 
c  who  durst  bring  me  food  except  by  stealth.'  * 

Such  resting  and  welcoming  found  Brother  Samson,  with  his 
worn  soles,  and  strong  heart !  He  sits  silent,  revolving  many 
thoughts,  at  the  foot  of  St.  Edmund's  Shrine.  In  the  wide 
Earth,  if  it  be  not  Saint  Edmund,  what  friend  or  refuge  has  he? 
Our  Lord  Abbot,  hearing  of  him,  sent  the  proper  officer  to  lead 
him  down  to  prison,  clap  '  foot-gyves  on  him '  there.  Another 
poor  official  furtively  brought  him  a  cup  of  wine  ;  bade  him  "be 
comforted  in  the  Lord."  Samson  utters  no  complaint;  obeys  in 
silence.  '  Our  Lord  Abbot,  taking  counsel  of  it,  banished  me  to 
'  Acre,  and  there  I  had  to  stay  long.' 

Our  Lord  Abbot  next  tried  Samson  with  promotions ;  made  him 
Subsacristan,  made  him  Librarian,  which  he  liked  best  of  all, 
being  passionately  fond  of  Books:  Samson,  with  many  thoughts 
in  him,  again  obeyed  in  silence  ;  discharged  his  offices  to  perfec- 
tion, but  never  thanked  our  Lord  Abbot,  —  seemed  rather  as  if 
looking  into  him,  with  those  clear  eyes  of  his.  Whereupon 
Abbot  Hugo  said,  Se  nunquam  vidisse,  he  had  never  seen  such  a 
man  ;  whom  no  severity  would  break  to  complain,  and  no  kind- 
ness soften  into  smiles  or  thanks  :  —  a  questionable  kind  of  man ! 

In  this  way,  not  without  troubles,  but  still  in  an  erect  clear- 
standing  manner,  has  Brother  Samson  reached  his  forty-seventh 
year;  and  his  ruddy  beard  is  getting  slightly  grizzled.  He  is  en- 
deavouring, in  these  days,  to  have  various  broken  things  thatched 
in ;  nay  perhaps  to  have  the  Choir  itself  completed,  for  he  can 
bear  nothing  ruinous.  He  has  gathered  '  heaps  of  lime  and  sand  ;' 
has  masons,  slaters  working,  he  and  Warinus  monachus  noster, 
who   are  joint  keepers   of  the  Shrine ;  paying ,  out  the  money 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  36. 


72  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

duly, — furnished  by  charitable  burghers  of  St.  Edmundsbury, 
they  say.  Charitable  burghers  of  St.  Edmundsbury?  To  me 
Jocelin  it  seems  rather,  Samson  and  Warinus,  whom  he  leads, 
have  privily  hoarded  the  oblations  at  the  Shrine  itself,  in  these 
late  years  of  indolent  dilapidation,  while  Abbot  Hugo  sat  wrapt 
inaccessible  ;  and  are  struggling,  in  this  prudent  way,  to  have  the 
rain  kept  out!*  —  Under  what  conditions,  sometimes,  has  Wis- 
dom to  struggle  with  Folly  ;  get  Folly  persuaded  to  so  much  as 
thatch  out  the  rain  from  itself!  For,  indeed,  if  the  Infant  govern 
the  Nurse,  what  dexterous  practice  on  the  Nurse's  part  will  not 
be  necessary  ! 

It  is  a  new  regret  to  us  that,  in  these  circumstances,  our  Lord 
the  King's  Custodiars,  interfering,  prohibited  all  building  or 
thatching  from  whatever  source  ;  and  no  Choir  shall  be  completed, 
and  Rain  and  Time,  for  the  present,  shall  have  their  way.  Willel- 
mus  Sacrista,  he  of  '  the  frequent  bibations  and  some  things  not 
to  be  spoken  of;'  he,  with  his  red  nose,  I  am  of  opinion,  had 
made  complaint  to  the  Custodiars  ;  wishing  to  do  Samson  an  ill 
turn:  —  Samson  his  Sw#-sacristan,  with  those  clear  eyes,  could 
not  be  a  prime  favourite  of  his !     Samson  again  obeys  in  silence. 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  7. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


THE    CANVASSING. 


Now,  however,  come  great  news  to  St.  Edmundsbury  :  That 
there  is  to  be  an  Abbot  elected  ;  that  our  interlunar  obscuration  is 
to  cease  ;  St.  Edmund's  Convent  no  more  to  be  a  doleful  widow, 
but  joyous  and  once  again  a  bride  !  Often  in  our  widowed  state 
had  we  prayed  to  the  Lord  and  St.  Edmund,  singing  weekly  a 
matter  of  '  one-and-twenty  penitential  Psalms,  on  our  knees  in  the 
Choir,'  that  a  fit  Pastor  might  be  vouchsafed  us.  And,  says 
Jocelin,  had  some  known  what  Abbot  we  were  to  get,  they  had 
not  been  so  devout,  I  believe  !  —  Bozzy  Jocelin  opens  to  mankind 
the  floodgates  of  authentic  Convent  gossip  ;  we  listen,  as  in  a 
Dionysius'  Ear,  to  the  inanest  hubbub,  like  the  voices  at  Virgil's 
Horn-Gate  of  Dreams.  Even  gossip,  seven  centuries  off,  has  sig- 
nificance. List,  list,  how  like  men  are  to  one  another  in  all  cen- 
turies : 

'  Dixit  quidam  de  quodam,  A  certain  person  said  of  a  certain 
'  person,  "  He,  that  Frater,  is  a  good  monk,  probabilis  persona; 
1  knows  much  of  the  order  and  customs  of  the  church  ;  and  though 
'  not  so  perfect  a  philosopher  as  some  others,  would  make  a  very 
1  good  Abbot.  Old  Abbot  Ording,  still  famed  among  us,  knew 
1  little  of  letters.  Besides,  as  we  read  in  Fables,  it  is  better  to 
1  choose  a  log  for  king,  than  a  serpent,  never  so  wise,  that  will 
'  venomously  hiss  and  bite  his  subjects."  —  "Impossible!"  an- 
'  swered  the  other  :  "  How  can  such  a  man  make  a  sermon  in  the 
'  chapter,  or  to  the  people  on  festival  days,  when  he  is  without 
'  letters?  How  can  he  have  the  skill  to  bind  and  to  loose,  he  who 
'  does  not  understand  the  Scriptures  ?     How  —  ?  "  ' 

And  then  '  another  said  of  another,  alius  de  alio,  "  That  Frater 
1  is  a  homo  lifrratus,  eloquent,  sagacious  ;  vigorous  in  discipline  ; 
7 


74  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

1  loves  the  Convent  much,  has  suffered  much  for  its  sake."  To 
'  which  a  third  party  answers,  "  From  all  your  great  clerks  good 
'  Lord  deliver  us  !  From  Norfolk  barrators,  and  surly  persons, 
*  That  it  would  please  thee  to  preserve  us,  We  beseech  thee  to 
1  hear  us,  good  Lord  !  "  '  Then  another  quid  am  said  of  another 
1  quo  dam,  "  That  Frater  is  a  good  manager  (husebondus) ;"  but 
'  was  swiftly  answered,  "  God  forbid  that  a  man  who  can  neither 
'  read  nor  chant,  nor  celebrate  the  divine  offices,  an  unjust  person 
1  withal,  and  grinder  of  the  faces  of  the  poor,  should  ever  be 
'  Abbot !  "  '  One  man,  it  appears,  is  nice  in  his  victuals.  An- 
other is  indeed  wise  ;  but  apt  to  slight  inferiors ;  hardly  at  the 
pains  to  answer,  if  they  argue  with  him  too  foolishly.  And  so 
each  aliquis  concerning  his  aliquo,  —  through  whole  pages  of  elec- 
tioneering babble.  '  For,'  says  Jocelin,  '  So  many  men,  as  many 
minds.'  Our  Monks  '  at  time  of  blood-letting,  tempore  minutionisf 
holding  their  sanhedrim  of  babble,  would  talk  in  this  manner  : 
Brother  Samson,  I  remarked,  never  said  anything  ;  sat  silent, 
sometimes  smiling  ;  but  he  took  good  note  of  what  others  said, 
and  would  bring  it  up,  on  occasion,  twenty  years  after.  As  for 
me  Jocelin,  I  was  of  opinion  that  '  some  skill  in  Dialectics,  to 
distinguish  true  from  false,'  would  be  good  in  an  Abbot.  I  spake, 
as  a  rash  Novice  in  those  days,  some  conscientious  words  of  a 
certain  benefactor  of  mine  ;  '  and  behold,  one  of  those  sons  of 
Belial  '  ran  and  reported  them  to  him,  so  that  he  never  after 
looked  at  me  with  the  same  face  again  !     Poor  Bozzy  !  — 

Such  is  the  buzz  and  frothy  simmering  ferment  of  the  general 
mind  and  no-mind  ;  struggling  to  '  make  itself  up,'  as  the  phrase 
is,  or  ascertain  what  it  does  really  want :  no  easy  matter,  in  most 
cases.  St.  Edmundsbury,  in  that  Candlemas  season  of  the  year 
1182,  is  a  busily  fermenting  place.  The  very  clothmakers  sit 
meditative  at  their  looms;  asking,  Who  shall  be  Abbot?  The 
sochemanni  speak  of  it,  driving  their  ox-teams  afield ;  the  old  wo- 
men with  their  spindles  :  and  none^yet  knows  what  the  days  will 
bring  forth. 

The  Prior,  however,  as  our  interim  chief,  must  proceed  to 
work  ;  get  ready  '  Twelve  Monks,'  and  set  off  with  them  to  his 
Majesty  at  Waltham,  there  shall  the  election  be  made.     An  elec- 


THE    CANVASSING.  75 

tion,  whether  managed  directly  by  ballot-box  on  public  hustings, 
or  indirectly  by  force  of  public  opinion,  or  were  it  even  by  open 
alehouses,  landlords'  coercion,  popular  club-law,  or  whatever  elec- 
toral methods,  is  always  an  interesting  phenomenon.  A  moun- 
tain tumbling  in  great  travail,  throwing  up  dustclouds  and  absurd 
noises,  is  visibly  there ;  uncertain  yet  what  mouse  or  monster  it 
will  give  birth  to. 

Besides  it  is  a  most  important  social  act ;  nay,  at  bottom,  the 
one  important  social  act.  Given  the  men  a  People  choose,  the 
People  itself,  in  its  exact  worth  and  worthlessness,  is  given.  A 
heroic  people  chooses  heroes,  and  is  happy ;  a  valet  or  flunkey 
people  chooses  sham-heroes,  what  are  called  quacks,  thinking 
them  heroes,  and  is  not  happy.  The  grand  summary  of  a  man's 
spiritual  condition,  what  brings  out  all  his  herohood  and  insight, 
or  all  his  flunkeyhood  and  horn-eyed  dimness,  is  this  question  put 
to  him,  What  man  dost  thou  honour  !  Which  is  thy  ideal  of  a 
man  ;  or  nearest  that  1  So  too  of  a  people  :  for  a  People  too, 
every  People,  speaks  its  choice,  —  were  it  only  by  silently  obey- 
ing, and  not  revolting,  — in  the  course  of  a  century  or  so.  Nor 
are  electoral  methods,  Reform  Bills  and  such  like,  unimportant. 
A  People's  electoral  methods  are,  in  the  long-run,  the  express 
image  of  its  electoral  talent ;  tending  and  gravitating  perpetually, 
irresistibly,  to  a  conformity  with  that :  and  are,  at  all  stages,  very 
significant  of  the  People.  Judicious  readers,  of  these  times,  are 
not  disinclined  to  see  how  Monks  elect  their  Abbot  in  the  Twelfth 
Century  :  how  the  St.  Edmundsbury  mountain  manages  its  mid- 
wifery ;  and  what  mouse  or  man  the  outcome  is. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE    ELECTION. 


Accordingly  our  Prior  assembles  us  in  Chapter  ;  and,  we  adjur- 
ing him  before  God  to  do  justly,  nominates,  not  by  our  selection, 
yet  with  our  assent,  Twelve  Monks,  moderately  satisfactory.  Of 
whom  are  Hugo  Third-Prior,  Brother  Dennis  a  venerable  man, 
Walter  the  Medicus,  Samson  Subsacrista,  and  other  esteemed 
characters,  —  though  Willelmus  Sacrista,  of  the  red  nose,  too  is 
one.  These  shall  proceed  straightway  to  Waltham  ;  elect  the 
Abbot  as  they  may  or  can.  Monks  are  sworn  to  obedience  ;  must 
not  speak  too  loud,  under  penalty  of  foot-gyves,  limbo,  and  bread 
and  water  :  yet  monks  luu  uuuld  know  what  it  is  they  are  obey- 
ing. The  St.  Edmundsbury  Community  has  no  hustings,  ballot- 
box,  indeed  no' open  voting  :  yet  by  various  vague  manipulations, 
pulse-feelings,  we  struggle  to  ascertain  what  its  virtual  aim  is, 
and  succeed  better  or  worse. 

This  question,  however,  rises  ;  alas,  a  quite  preliminary  ques- 
tion :  Will  the  Dominus  Rex  allow  us  to  choose  freely  ?  It  is  to  be 
hoped  !  Well,  if  so,  we  agree  to  choose  one  of  our  own  Con- 
vent. If  not,  if  the  Dominus  Rex  will  force  a  stranger  on  us,  we 
decide  on  demurring,  the  Prior  and  his  Twelve  shall  demur  :  we 
can  appeal,  plead,  remonstrate :  appeal  even  to  the  Pope,  but 
trust  it  will  not  be  necessary.  Then  there  is  this  other  question, 
raised  by  Brother  Samson  :  What  if  the  Thirteen  should  not 
themselves  be  able  to  agree  1  Brother  Samson  Subsacrista,  one 
remarks,  is  ready  oftenest  with  some  question,  some  suggestion, 
that  has  wisdom  in  it.  Though  a  servant  of  servants,  and  saying 
little,  his  words  all  tell,  having  sense  in  them ;  it  seems  by  his 
light  mainly  that  we  steer  ourselves  in  this  great  dimness. 

What  if  the  Thirteen  should  not  themselves  be  able  to  agree  ? 


THE    ELECTION.  77 

Speak,  Samson,  and  advise. — Could  not,  hints  Samson,  Six  of 
our  venerablest  elders  be  chosen  by  us,  a  kind  of  electoral  com- 
mittee, here  and  now  :  of  these,  '  with  their  hand  on  the  Gospels, 
with  their  eye  on  the  Sacrosancta,'  we  take  oath  that  they  will  do 
faithfully  ;  let  these,  in  secret  and  as  before  God,  agree  on  Three 
whom  they  reckon  fittest ;  write  their  names  in  a  Paper,  and  de- 
liver the  same  sealed,  forthwith,  to  the  Thirteen  :  one  of  those 
Three  the  Thirteen  shall  fix  on,  if  permitted.  If  not  permitted, 
that  is  to  say,  if  the  Dominus  Rex  force  us  to  demur,  —  the  Paper 
shall  be  brought  back  unopened,  and  publicly  burned,  that  no 
man's  secret  bring  him  into  trouble. 

So  Samson  advises,  so  we  act ;  wisely,  in  this  and  in  other 
crises  of  the  business.  Our  electoral  committee,  its  eye  on  the 
Sacrosancta,  is  soon  named,  soon  sworn  ;  and  we  striking  up  the 
Fifth  Psalm,  '  Verba  mea, 

'  Give  ear  unto  my  words,  O  Lord, 
My  meditation  weigh,' 

march  out  chanting,  and  leave  the  Six  to  their  work  in  the  Chap- 
ter here.  Their  work,  before  long,  they  announce  as  finished  : 
they,  with  their  eye  on  the  Sacrosancta,  imprecating  the  Lord  to 
weigh  and  witness  their  meditation,  have  fixed  on  Three  Names, 
and  written  them  in  this  Sealed  Paper.  Let  Samson  Subsacrista, 
general  servant  of  the  party,  take  charge  of  it.  On  the  morrow 
morning,  our  Prior  and  his  Twelve  will  be  ready  to  get  under 
way. 

This  then  is  the  ballot-box  and  electoral  winnowing-machine 
they  have  at  St.  Edmundsbury  ;  a  mind  fixed  on  the  Thrice  Holy, 
an  appeal  to  God  on  high  to  witness  their  meditation  :  by  far  the 
best,  and  indeed  the  only  good  electoral  winnowing-machine,  — 
if  men  have  souls  in  them.  Totally  worthless,  it  is  true,  and 
even  hideous  and  poisonous,  if  men  have  no  souls.  But  without 
soul,  alas  what  winnowing-machine  in  human  elections,  can  be  of 
avail  ?  We  cannot  get  along  without  soul ;  we  stick  fast,  the 
mournfullest  spectacle  ;  and  salt  itself  will  not  save  us  ! 

On  the  morrow  morning,  accordingly,  our  Thirteen  set  forth  ; 
or  rather  our  Prior  and  Eleven  ;  for  Samson,  as  general  servant 

7# 


78  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

of  the  party,  has  to  linger,  settling  many  things.  At  length  he 
too  gets  upon  the  road  :  and,  '  carrying  the  sealed  Paper  in  a 
'  leather  pouch  hung  round  his  neck  ;  and  froccum  bajulans  in 
'  ulnis  '  (thanks  to  thee  Bozzy  Jocelin),  'his  frock-skirts  looped 
'  over  his  elbow,'  shewing  substantial  stern- works,  tramps  stoutly 
along.  Away  across  the  Heath,  not  yet  of  Newmarket  and  horse- 
jockeying  ;  across  your  Fleam-dike  and  Devil' s-dike,  no  longer 
useful  as  a  Mercian  East- Anglian  boundary  or  bulwark  :  contin- 
ually towards  Waltham,  and  the  Bishop  of  Winchester's  House 
there,  for  his  Majesty  is  in  that.  Brother  Samson,  as  purse- 
bearer,  has  the  reckoning  always,  when  there  is  one,  to  pay  ; 
'  delays  are  numerous,'  progress  none  of  the  swiftest. 

But,  in  the  solitude  of  the  Convent,  Destiny  thus  big  and  in  her 
birthtime,  what  gossiping,  what  babbling,  what  dreaming  of 
dreams  !  The  secret  of  the  Three  our  electoral  elders  alone 
know  :  some  Abbot  we  shall  have  to  govern  us  ;  but  which  Ab- 
bot, O  which !  One  Monk  discerns  in  a  vision  of  the  night- 
watches,  that  we  shall  get  an  Abbot  of  our  own  body,  without 
needing  to  demur  :  a  prophet  appeared  to  him  clad  all  in  white, 
and  said,  "  Ye  shall  have  one  of  yours,  and  he  will  rage  among 
you  like  a  wolf,  seeviel  ut  lupus."  Verily  !  — then  which  of  ours? 
Another  Monk  now  dreams  :  he  has  seen  clearly  which  ;  a  cer- 
tain Figure  taller  by  head  and  shoulders  than  the  other  two, 
dressed  in  alb  and  pallium,  and  with  the  attitude  of  one  about  to 
fight ;  —  which  tall  Figure  a  wise  Editor  would  rather  not  name 
at  this  stage  of  the  business  ?  Enough  that  the  vision  is  true  : 
that  Saint  Edmund  himself,  pale  and  awful,  seemed  to  rise  from 
his  Shrine,  with  naked  feet,  and  say  audibly,  "  He,  ille,  shall  veil 
my  feet ;  "  which  part  of  the  vision  also  proves  true.  Such 
guessing,  visioning,  dim  perscrutation  of  the  momentous  future  : 
the  very  clothmakers,  old  women,  all  townsfolk  speak  of  it,  '  and 
'  more  than  once  it  is  reported  in  St.  Edmundsbury,  This  one  is 
'  elected  ;  and  then,  This  one  and  That  other.'     Who  knows? 

But  now,  sure  enough,  at  Waltham  '  on  the  Second  Sunday  of 
Quadragesima,'  which  Dryasdust  declares  to  mean  the  22d  day  of 
February,  year  1182,  Thirteen  St.  Edmundsbury  Monks  are,  at 
last,  seen   processioning  towards  the  Winchester  Manorhouse  ; 


THE    ELECTION.  79 

and  in  some  high  Presence-chamber,  and  Hall  of  State,  get  ac- 
cess to  Henry  II.  in  all  his  glory.  What  a  Hall,  —  not  imaginary 
in  the  least,  but  entirely  real  and  indisputable,  though  so  ex- 
tremely dim  to  us  ;  sunk  in  the  deep  distances  of  Night !  The 
Winchester  Manorhouse  has  fled  bodily,  like  a  Dream  of  the  old 
Night ;  not  Dryasdust  himself  can  show  a  wreck  of  it.  House 
and  people,  royal  and  episcopal,  lords  and  varlets,  where  are 
they  1  Why  there,  I  say,  Seven  Centuries  off ;  sunk  so  far  in  the 
Night,  there  they  are;  peep  through  the  blankets  of  the  old 
Night,  and  thou  wilt  see  !  King  Henry  himself  is  visibly  there, 
a  vivid,  noble-looking  man,  with  grizzled  beard,  in  glittering  un- 
certain costume  ;  with  earls  round  him,  and  bishops  and  dignita- 
ries, in  the  like.  The  Hall  is  large,  and  has  for  one  thing  an 
altar  near  it,  — chapel  and  altar  adjoining  it ;  but  what  gilt  seats, 
carved  tables,  carpeting  of  rush-cloth,  what  arras-hangings,  and  a 
huge  fire  of  logs  :  —  alas,  it  has  Human  Life  in  it ;  and  is  not 
that  the  grand  miracle,  in  what  hangings  or  costume  soever  1  — 

The  Dominus  Rex,  benignantly  receiving  our  Thirteen  with 
their  obeisance,  and  graciously  declaring  that  he  will  strive  to  act 
for  God's  honour,  and  the  Church's  good,  commands,  '  by  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester  and  Geoffrey  the  Chancellor,' —  Galfridus 
Cancellarius ,  Henry's  and  the  Fair  Rosamond's  authentic  Son 
present  here! — commands,  "That  they,  the  said  Thirteen,  do 
now  withdraw,  and  fix  upon  Three  from  their  own  Monastery." 
A  work  soon  done  ;  the  Three  hanging  ready  round  Samson's 
neck,  in  that  leather  pouch  of  his.  Breaking  the  seal,  we  find 
the  names,  —  what  think  ye  of  it,  ye  higher  dignitaries,  thou  indo- 
lent Prior,  thou  Willelmus  Sacrist  a  with  the  red  bottle-nose1?  — 
the  names,  in  this  order :  of  Samson  Subsacrisla,  of  Roger  the 
distressed  Cellarer,  of  Hugo  Tertius-Prior. 

The  higher  dignitaries,  all  omitted  here,  '  flush  suddenly  red  in 
the  face  ; '  but  have  nothing  to  say.  One  curious  fact  and  ques- 
tion certainly  is,  How  Hugo  Third-Prior,  who  was  of  the  electral 
committee,  came  to  nominate  himself  as  one  of  the  Three  !  A 
curious  fact,  which  Hugo  Third-Prior  has  never  yet  entirely 
explained,  that  I  know  of!  — However,  we  return,  and  report  to 
the  King  our  Three  names ;  merely  altering  the  order  ;  putting 
Samson  last,  as  lowest  of  all.     The  King,  at  recitation  of  our 


80  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Three,  asks  us;  "Who  are  they?  Were  they  born  in  my  do- 
main 1  Totally  unknown  to  me  1  You  must  nominate  three 
others."  "Whereupon  Willelmus  Sacrista  says,  "  Our  Prior  must 
be  named,  quia  caput  nostrum  est,  being  already  our  head."  And 
the  Prior  responds,  "Willelmus  Sacrista  is  a  fit  man,  bonus  vir 
est,"  —  for  all  his  red  nose.  Tickle  me  Toby,  and  I'll  tickle 
thee  !  Venerable  Dennis  too  is  named ;  none  in  his  conscience 
can  say  nay.  There  are  now  Six  on  our  List.  "Well,"  said 
the  King,  "  they  have  done  it  swiftly  they  !  Deus  est  cum  eis." 
The  Monks  withdraw  again ;  and  Majesty  revolves,  for  a  little, 
with  his  Pares  and  Episcopi,  Lords  or  '  Law-wards '  and  Soul- 
Overseers,  the  thoughts  of  the  royal  breast.  The  Monks  wait 
silent  in  an  outer  room. 

In  short  while,  they  are  next  ordered,  To  add  yet  another 
three  ;  but  not  from  their  own  Convent ;  from  other  Convents, 
"  for  the  honour  of  my  kingdom."  Here,  — what  is  to  be  done 
here1?  We  will  demur,  if  need  be  !  We  do  name  three,  how- 
ever, for  the  nonce  :  the  Prior  of  St.  Faith's,  a  good  Monk  of  St. 
Neot's,  a  good  Monk  of  St.  Alban's;  good  men  all ;  all  made 
abbots  and  dignitaries  since,  at  this  hour.  There  are  now  Nine 
upon  our  List.  What  the  thoughts  of  the  Dominus  Rex  may  be 
farther]  The  Dominus  Rex,  thanking  graciously,  sends  out 
word  that  we  shall  now  strike  off  three.  The  three  strangers  are 
instantly  struck  off.  Willelmus  Sacrista  adds,  that  he  will  of  his 
own  accord  decline,  —  a  touch  of  grace  and  respect  for  the 
Sacrosancta,  even  in  Willelmus !  The  King  then  orders  us  to 
strike  off  a  couple  more  ;  then  yet  one  more  :  Hugo  Third-Prior 
goes,  and  Roger  Cellerarius,  and  venerable  Monk  Dennis  ;  —  and 
now  there  remain  on  our  List  two  only,  Samson  Subsacrista  and 
the  Prior. 

Which  of  these  two  1  It  were  hard  to  say, — by  Monks  who 
may  get  themselves  foot-gyved  and  thrown  into  limbo,  for  speak- 
ing !  We  humbly  request  that  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  and 
Geoffrey  the  Chancellor  may  again  enter,  and  help  us  to  decide. 
"Which  do  you  want?"  asks  the  Bishop.  Venerable  Dennis 
made  a  speech,  '  commending  the  persons  of  the  Prior  and  Sam- 
'  son  ;  but  always  in  the  corner  of  his  discourse,  in  angulo  sui 
c  sermonis,   brought   Samson  in.'     "I  see!"    said  the  Bishop: 


THE    ELECTION.  81 

"  We  are  to  understand  that  your  Prior  is  somewhat  remiss  ;  that 
you  want  to  have  him  you  call  Samson  for  Abbot."  "  Either  of 
them  is  good,"  said  venerable  Dennis,  almost  trembling;  "but 
we  would  have  the  better,  if  it  pleased  God."  "  Which  of  the 
two  do  you  want?  "  inquires  the  Bishop  pointedly.  "  Samson  !  " 
answered  Dennis  ;  "  Samson  !  "  echoed  all  of  the  rest  that  durst 
speak  or  echo  anything  :  and  Samson  is  reported  to  the  King 
accordingly.  His  Majesty,  advising  of  it  for  a  moment,  orders 
that  Samson  be  brought  in  with  the  other  Twelve. 

The  King's  Majesty,  looking  at  us  somewhat  sternly,  then 
says  :  "  You  present  to  me  Samson  ;  I  do  not  know  him  :  had  it 
been  your  Prior,  whom  I  do  know,  I  should  have  accepted  him : 
however,  I  will  now  do  as  you  wish.  But  have  a  care  of  your- 
selves. By  the  true  eyes  of  God,  per  veros  oculos  Dei,  if  you 
manage  badly,  I  will  be  upon  you  !  "  Samson,  therefore,  steps 
forward,  kisses  the  King's  feet  ;  but  swiftly  rises  erect  again, 
swiftly  turns  towards  the  altar,  uplifting  with  the  other  Twelve, 
in  clear  tenor-note,  the  Fifty-first  Psalm,  '  Miserere  mei  Deus, 

c  After  thy  loving  kindness,  Lord, 
Have  mercy  upon  me  ;  5 

with  firm  voice,  firm  step  and  head,  no  change  in  his  countenance 
whatever.  "  By  God's  eyes,"  said  the  King,  "  that  one,  I  think, 
will  govern  the  Abbey  well."  By  the  same  oath  (charged  to 
your  Majesty's  account),  I  too  am  precisely  of  that  opinion  !  It 
is  somewhile  since  I  fell  in  with  a  likelier  man  anywhere  than 
this  new  Abbot  Samson.  Long  life  to  him,  and  may  the  Lord 
have  mercy  on  him  as  Abbot ! 

Thus,  then,  have  the  St.  Edmundsbury  Monks,  without  express 
ballot-box  or  other  good  winnowing-machine,  contrived  to  accom- 
plish the  most  important  social  feat  a  body  of  men  can  do,  to 
winnow  out  the  man  that  is  to  govern  them  :  and  truly  one  sees 
not  that,  by  any  winnowing-machine  whatever,  they  could  have 
done  it  better.  O  ye  kind  Heavens,  there  is  in  every  Nation  and 
Community  a  fittest,  a  wisest,  bravest,  best ;  whom  could  we  find 
and  make  King  over  us,  all  were  in  very  truth  well ;  —  the  best 


82  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

that  God  and  Nature  had  permitted  us  to  make  it  !  By  what  art 
discover  him  ?  Will  the  Heavens  in  their  pity  teach  us  no  art ; 
for  our  need  of  him  is  great ! 

Ballot-boxes,  Reform  Bills,  winnowing-machines  :  all  these 
are  good,  or  are  not  so  good  ;  —  alas,  brethren,  how  can  these,  I 
say,  be  other  than  inadequate,  be  other  than  failures,  melancholy 
to  behold !  Dim  all  souls  of  men  to  the  divine,  the  high  and 
awful  meaning  of  Human  Worth  and  Truth,  we  shall  never, 
by  all  the  machinery  in  Birmingham,  discover  the  True  and 
Worthy.  It  is  written,  'if we  are  ourselves  valets,  there  shall 
1  exist  no  hero  for  us  ;  we  shall  not  know  the  hero  when  we  see 
him ;  '  —  we  shall  take  the  quack  for  a  hero  ;  and  cry,  audibly 
through  all  ballot-boxes  and  machinery  whatsoever,  Thou  art  he  ; 
be  thou  King  over  us  ! 

What  boots  it?  Seek  only  deceitful  Speciosity,  money  with 
gilt  carriages,  '  fame '  with  newspaper  paragraphs,  whatever 
name  it  bear,  you  will  find  only  deceitful  Speciosity  ;  godlike 
Reality  will  be  forever  far  from  you.  The  Quack  shall  be  legiti- 
mate inevitable  King  of  you  ;  no  earthly  machinery  able  to  ex- 
clude the  Quack.  Ye  shall  be  born  thralls  of  the  Quack,  and 
suffer  under  him,  till  your  hearts  are  near  broken,  and  no  French 
Revolution  or  Manchester  Insurrection,  or  partial  or  universal  vol- 
canic combustions  and  explosions,  never  so  many,  can  do  more 
than  '  change  the  figure  of  your  Quack  ;  '  the  essence  of  him 
remaining,  for  a  time  and  times.  —  "  How  long,  O  Prophet?" 
say  some,  with  a  rather  melancholy  sneer.  Alas,  ye  wnprophetic, 
ever  till  this  come  about  :  Till  deep  misery,  if  nothing  softer  will, 
have  driven  you  out  of  your  Speciosities  into  your  Sincerities ; 
and  you  find  that  there  either  is  a  Godlike  in  the  world,  or  else 
ye  are  an  unintelligible  madness  ;  that  there  is  a  God,  as  well  as 
a  Mammon  and  a  Devil,  and  a  Genius  of  Luxuries  and  canting 
Dilettantisms  and  Vain  Shows  !  How  long  that  will  be,  con> 
pute  for  yourselves.     My  unhappy  brothers  !  — 


CHAPTER  IX. 


ABBOT    SAMSON. 


So  then  the  bells  of  St.  Edmundsbury  clang  out  one  and  all,  and 
in  church  and  chapel  the  organs  go  :  Convent  and  Town,  and  all 
the  west  side  of  Suffolk,  are  in  gala  ;  knights,  viscounts,  weavers, 
spinners,  the  entire  population,  male  and  female,  young  and  old, 
the  very  sockmen  with  their  chubby  infants,  —  out  to  have  a  holi- 
day, and  see  the  Lord  Abbot  arrive !  And  there  is  '  stripping 
barefoot '  of  the  Lord  Abbot  at  the  Gate,  and  solemn  leading  of 
him  in  to  the  High  Altar  and  Shrine  ;  with  sudden  '  silence  of  all 
the  bells  and  organs,'  as  we  kneel  in  deep  prayer  there  ;  and  again 
with  outburst  of  all  the  bells  and  organs,  and  loud  Te  Deum  from 
the  general  human  windpipe  ;  and  speeches  by  the  leading  vis- 
count, and  giving  of  the  kiss  of  brotherhood ;  the  whole  wound 
up  with  popular  games,  and  dinner  within  doors  of  more  than 
a  thousand  strong,  plus  quam  mille  comedentibus  in  gaudio  magno. 
In  such  manner  is  the  selfsame  Samson  once  again  returning  to 
us,  welcomed  on  this  occasion.  He  that  went  away  with  his 
frock- skirts  looped  over  his  arm,  comes  back  riding  high ;  sud- 
denly made  one  of  the  dignitaries  of  this  world.  Reflective 
readers  will  admit  that  here  was  a  trial  for  a  man.  Yesterday  a 
poor  mendicant,  allowed  to  possess  not  above  two  shillings  of 
money,  and  without  authority  to  bid  a  dog  run  for  him,  this  man 
today  finds  himself  a  Dominus  Abbas,  mitred  Peer  of  Parliament, 
Lord  of  manorhouses,  farms,  manors,  and  wide  lands  ;  a  man  with 
'  Fifty  Knights  under  him,'  and  dependent  swiftly  obedient  multi- 
tudes of  men.  It  is  a  change  greater  than  Napoleon's  ;  so  sudden 
withal.  As  if  one  of  the  Chandos  day-drudges  had,  on  awaken- 
ing some  morning,  found  that  he  overnight  was  become  Duke ! 
Let  Samson  with  his  clear-beaming  eyes  see  into  that,  and  discern 


84  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

it  if  he  can.  We  shall  now  get  the  measure  of  him  by  a  new 
scale  of  inches,  considerably  more  rigorous  than  the  former  was. 
For  if  a  noble  soul  is  rendered  tenfold  beautifuller  by  victory  and 
prosperity,  springing  now  radiant  as  into  his  own  due  element 
and  sun-throne  ;  an  ignoble  one  is  rendered  tenfold  and  hundred- 
fold uglier,  pitifuller.  Whatsoever  vices,  whatsoever  weaknesses 
were  in  the  man,  the  parvenu  will  shew  us  them  enlarged,  as  in 
the  solar  microscope,  into  frightful  distortion.  Nay,  how  many 
mere  seminal  principles  of  vice,  hitherto  all  wholesomely  kept 
latent,  may  we  now  see  unfolded,  as  in  the  solar  hot-house,  into 
growth,  into  huge  universally-conspicuous  luxuriance  and  devel- 
opment ! 

But  is  not  this,  at  any  rate,  a  singular  aspect  of  what  political 
and  social  capabilities,  nay  let  us  say  what  depth  and  opulence  of 
true  social  vitality,  lay  in  those  old  barbarous  ages,  That  the  fit 
Governor  could  be  met  with  under  such  disguises,  could  be  recog- 
nised and  laid  hold  of  under  such  1  Here  he  is  discovered  with  a 
maximum  of  two  shillings  in  his  pocket,  and  a  leather  scrip  round 
his  neck  ;  trudging  along  the  highway,  his  frock-skirts  looped 
over  his  arm.  They  think  this  is  he  nevertheless,  the  true  Gov- 
ernor ;  and  he  proves  to  be  so.  Brethren,  have  we  no  need  of 
discovering  true  Governors,  but  will  sham  ones  forever  do  for  us  ? 
These  were  absurd  superstitious  blockheads  of  Monks  ;  and  we 
are  enlightened  Tenpound  Franchisers,  without  taxes  on  knowl- 
edge !  Where,  I  say,  are  our  superior,  are  our  similar  or  at  all 
comparable  discoveries'?  We  also  have  eyes,  or  ought  to  have  ; 
we  have  hustings,  telescopes  ;  we  have  lights,  link-lights  and 
rush-lights  of  an  enlightened  free  Press,  burning  and  dancing 
everywhere,  as  in  a  universal  torch-dance  ;  singeing  your  whisk- 
ers as  you  traverse  the  public  thoroughfares  in  town  and  country. 
Great  souls,  true  Governors,  go  about  under  all  manner  of  dis- 
guises now  as  then.  Such  telescopes,  such  enlightenment,  — 
and  such  discovery  !  How  comes  it,  I  say  ;  how  comes  it !  Is 
it  not  lamentable  ;  is  it  not  even,  in  some  sense,  amazing? 

Alas,  the  defect,  as  we  must  often  urge  and  again  urge,  is  less 
a  defect  of  telescopes  than  of  some  eyesight.  Those  superstitious 
blockheads  of  the  Twelth  Century  had  no  telescopes,  but  they 


ABBOT    SAMSON.  85 

had  still  an  eye  :  not  ballot-boxes ;  only  reverence  for  Worth, 
abhorrence  of  Unworth.  It  is  the  way  with  all  barbarians.  Thus 
Mr.  Sale  informs  me,  the  old  Arab  Tribes  would  gather  in  liveli- 
est gaudeamus,  and  sing,  and  kindle  bonfires,  and  wreathe  crowns 
of  honour,  and  solemnly  thank  the  gods  that,  in  their  Tribe  too, 
a  Poet  had  shewn  himself.  As  indeed  they  well  might ;  for  what 
usefuller,  I  say  not  nobler  and  heavenlier  thing  could  the  gods, 
doing  their  very  kindest,  send  to  any  Tribe  or  Nation,  in  any 
time  or  circumstances  1  I  declare  to  thee,  my  afflicted  quack- 
ridden  brother,  in  spite  of  thy  astonishment,  it  is  very  lamentable ! 
We  English  find  a  Poet,  as  brave  a  man  as  has  been  made  for  a 
hundred  years  or  so  anywhere  under  the  Sun  ;  and  do  we  kindle 
bonfires,  thank  the  gods?  Not  at  all.  We,  taking  due  counsel 
of  it,  set  the  man  to  gauge  ale-barrels  in  the  Burgh  of  Dumfries  ; 
and  pique  ourselves  on  our  '  patronage  of  genius.' 

Genius,  Poet  :  do  we  know  what  these  words  mean  1  An  in- 
spired Soul  once  more  vouchsafed  us,  direct  from  Nature's  own 
great  fire-heart,  to  see  the  Truth,  and  speak  it,  and  do  it ;  Na- 
ture's own  sacred  voice  heard  once  more  athwart  the  dreary 
boundless  element  of  hearsaying  and  canting,  of  twaddle  and  pol- 
troonery, in  which  the  bewildered  Earth,  nigh  perishing,  has  lost 
its  way.  Hear  once  more,  ye  bewildered  benighted  mortals  ;  lis- 
ten once  again  to  a  voice  from  the  inner  Light-sea  and  Flame-sea, 
Nature's  and  Truth's  own  heart ;  know  the  Fact  of  your  Exist- 
ence what  it  is,  put  away  the  Cant  of  it  which  it  is  not;  and 
knowing,  do,  and  let  it  be  well  with  you  !  — 

George  the  Third  is  Defender  of  something  we  call  '  the  Faith  ' 
in  those  years  ;  George  the  Third  is  head  charioteer  of  the  Desti- 
nies of  England,  to  guide  them  through  the  gulf  of  French  Revo- 
lutions, American  Independences  ;  and  Robert  Burns  is  Gauger 
of  ale  in  Dumfries.  It  is  an  Iliad  in  a  nutshell.  The  physiognomy 
of  a  world  now  verging  towards  dissolution,  reduced  now  to 
spasms  and  death- throes,  lies  pictured  in  that  one  fact,  —  which 
astonishes  nobody,  except  at  me  for  being  astonished  at  it.  The 
fruit  of  long  ages  of  confirmed  Valethood,  entirely  confirmed  as 
into  a  Law  of  Nature  ;  cloth-worship  and  quack-worship  :  entirely 
confirmed  Valethood,  —  which  will  have  to  wnconfirm  itself  again  ; 
God  knows,  with  difficulty  enough  !  — 
8 


86  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Abbot  Samson  had  found  a  Convent  all  in  dilapidation  ;  rain 
beating  through  it,  material  rain  and  metaphorical,  from  all  quar- 
ters of  the  compass.  Willelmus  Sacrista  sits  drinking  nightly, 
and  doing  mere  taceiida.  Our  larders  are  reduced  to  leanness, 
Jew  Harpies  and  unclean  creatures  our  purveyors  ;  in  our  basket 
is  no  bread.  Old  women  with  their  distaffs  rush  out.  on  a  dis- 
tressed Cellarer  in  shrill  Chartism.  '  You  cannot  stir  abroad  but 
Jews  and  Christians  pounce  upon  you  with  unsettled  bonds ;  ' 
debts  boundless  seemingly  as  the  National  Debt  of  England.  For 
four  years  our  new  Lord  Abbot  never  went  abroad  but  Jew  credi- 
tors and  Christian,  and  all  manner  of  creditors,  were  about  him; 
driving  him  to  very  despair.  Our  Prior  is  remiss  ;  our  Cellarers, 
officials  are  remiss,  our  monks  are  remiss :  what  man  is  not  re- 
miss 1  Front  this,  Samson,  thou  alone  art  there  to  front  it ;  it  is 
thy  task  to  front  and  fight  this,  and  to  die  or  kill  it.  May  the 
Lord  have  mercy  on  thee  ! 

To  our  antiquarian  interest  in  poor  Jocelin  and  his  Convent, 
where  the  whole  aspect  of  existence,  the  whole  dialect,  of  thought, 
of  speech,  of  activity,  is  so  obsolete,  strange,  long-vanished,  there 
now  superadds  itself  a  mild  glow  of  human  interest  for  Abbot 
Samson  ;  a  real  pleasure,  as  at  sight  of  man's  work,  especially 
of  governing,  which  is  man's  highest  work,  done  well.  Abbot 
Samson  had  no  experience  in  governing  ;  had  served  no  appren- 
ticeship to  the  trade  of  governing,  —  alas,  only  the  hardest  ap- 
prenticeship to  that  of  obeying.  He  had  never  in  any  court  given 
vadium  or  plegium,  says  Jocelin  ;  hardly  ever  seen  a  court,  when 
he  was  set  to  preside  in  one.  But  it  is  astonishing,  continues 
Jocelin,  how  soon  he  learned  the  ways  of  business  ;  and,  in  all 
sort  of  affairs,  became  expert  beyond  others.  Of  the  many  per- 
sons offering  him  their  service  '  he  retained  one  Knight  skilled  in 
taking  vadia  and  plegia;  '  and  within  the  year  was  himself  well 
skilled.  Nay,  by  and  by,  the  Pope  appoints  him  Justiciary  in 
certain  causes  ;  the  King  one  of  his  new  Circuit  Judges  :  official 
Osbert  is  heard  saying,  "  That  Abbot  is  one  of  your  shrewd  ones, 
dispulator  est ;  if  he  go  on  as  he  begins,  he  will  cut  out  every 
lawyer  of  us!  "* 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  25. 


ABBOT    SAMSON.  87 

Why  not?  What  is  to  hinder  this  Samson  from  governing'? 
There  is  in  him  what  far  transcends  all  apprenticeships ;  in  the 
man  himself  there  exists  a  model  of  governing,  something  to  go- 
vern by  !  There  exists  in  him  a  heart-abhorrence  of  whatever  is 
incoherent,  pusillanimous,  unveracious,  —  that  is  to  say,  chaotic, 
ungoxemed  ;  of  the  Devil,  not  of  God.  A  man  of  this  kind  can- 
not help  governing  !  He  has  the  living  ideal  of  a  governor  in 
him  ;  and  the  incessant  necessity  of  struggling  to  unfold  the  same 
out  of  him.  Not  the  Devil  or  Chaos,  for  any  wages,  will  he 
serve  ;  no,  this  man  is  the  born  servant  of  Another  than  them. 
Alas,  how  little  avail  all  apprenticeships,  when  there  is, in  your 
governor  himself  what  we  may  well  call  nothing  to  govern  by : 
nothing  ;  —  a  general  grey  twilight,  looming  with  shapes  of  ex- 
pediences, parliamentary  traditions,  division-lists,  election-funds, 
leading-articles  ;  this,  with  what  of  vulpine  alertness  and  adroit- 
ness soever,  is  not  much  ! 

But  indeed  what  say  we,  apprenticeship?  Had  not  this  Sam- 
son served,  in  his  way,  a  right  good  apprenticeship  to  governing  ; 
namely,  the  harshest  slave-apprenticeship  to  obeying !  Walk 
this  world  with  no  friend  in  it  but  God  and  St.  Edmund,  you  will 
either  fall  into  the  ditch,  or  learn  a  good  many  things.  To  learn 
obeying  is  the  fundamental  art  of  governing.  How  much  would 
many  a  Serene  Highness  have  learned,  had  he  travelled  through 
the  world  with  water-jug  and  empty  wallet,  sine  omni  expensa; 
and,  at  his  victorious  return,  sat  down  not  to  newspaper-para- 
graphs and  city-illuminations,  but  at  the  foot  of  St.  Edmund's 
Shrine  to  shackles  and  bread  and  water !  He  that  cannot  be  ser- 
vant of  many,  will  never  be  master,  true  guide  and  deliverer  of 
many; — that  is  the  meaning  of  true  mastership.  Had  not  the 
Monk-life  extraordinary  '  political  capabilities  '  in  it  •,  if  not  imita- 
ble  by  us,  yet  enviable?  Heavens,  had  a  Duke  of  Logwood,  now 
rolling  sumptuously  to  his  place  in  the  Collective  Wisdom,  but 
himself  happened  to  plough  daily,  at  one  time,  on  seven-and-six- 
pence  a  week,  with  no  out-door  relief,  —  what  a  light,  unquench- 
able by  logic  and  statistic  and  arithmetic,  would  it  have  thrown  on 
several  things  for  him  ! 

In  all  cases,  therefore,  we  will  agree  with  the  judicious  Mrs. 
Glass  :  '  First  catch   your   hare  !  '     First  get  your  man  ;  all  is 


88  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

got :  he  can  learn  to  do  all  things,  from  making  boots,  to  decree- 
ing judgments,  governing  communities ;  and  will  do  them  like  a 
man.  Catch  your  no-man, — alas,  have  you  not  caught  the 
terriblest  Tartar  in  the  world !  Perhaps  all  the  terribler,  the 
quieter  and  gentler  he  looks.  For  the  mischief  that  one  block- 
head, that  every  blockhead  does,  in  a  world  so  feracious,  teeming 
with  endless  results  as  ours,  no  ciphering  will  sum  up.  The 
quack  bootmaker  is  considerable  ;  as  corn-cutters  can  testify,  and 
desperate  men  reduced  to  buckskin  and  list-shoes.  But  the 
quack  priest,  quack  high-priest,  the  quack  king !  Why  do  not 
all  just  citizens  rush,  half-frantic,  to  stop  him,  as  they  would  a 
conflagration'?  Surely  a  just  citizen  is  admonished  by  God  and 
his  own  Soul,  by  all  silent  and  articulate  voices  of  this  Universe, 
to  do  what  in  him  lies  towards  relief  of  this  poor  blockhead-quack, 
and  of  a  world  that  groans  under  him.  Run  swiftly;  relieve 
him,  —  were  it  even  by  extinguishing  him  !  For  all  things  have 
grown  so  old,  tinder-dry,  combustible ;  and  he  is  more  ruinous 
than  conflagration.  Sweep  him  doiirn,  at  least  ;  keep  him  strictly 
within  the  hearth  :  he  will  then  cease  to  be  conflagration  ;  he  will 
then  become  useful,  more  or  less,  as  culinary  fire.  Fire  is  the 
best  of  servants  ;  but  what  a  master  !  This  poor  blockhead  too  is 
born  for  uses :  why,  elevating  him  to  mastership,  will  you  make 
a  conflagration,  a  parish-curse  or  world-curse  of  him? 


CHAPTER  X. 


GOVERNMENT. 


How  Abbot  Samson,  giving  his  new  subjects  seriatim  the  kiss  of 
fatherhood  in  the  St.  Edmundsbury  chapterhouse,  proceeded  with 
cautious  energy  to  set  about  reforming  their  disjointed  distracted 
way  of  life  ;  how  he  managed  with  his  Fifty  rough  Milites  (Feu- 
dal Knights),  with  his  lazy  Farmers,  remiss  refractory  Monks, 
with  Pope's  Legates,  Viscounts,  Bishops,  Kings  ;  how  on  all 
sides  he  laid  about  him  like  a  man,  and  putting  consequence  on 
premiss,  and  everywhere  the  saddle  on  the  right  horse,  struggled 
incessantly  to  educe  organic  method  out  of  lazily  fermenting 
wreck,  —  the  careful  reader  will  discern,  not  without  true  inter- 
est, in  these  pages  of  Jocelin  Boswell.  In  most  antiquarian  quaint 
costume,  not  of  garments  alone,  but  of  thought,  word,  action, 
outlook  and  position,  the  substantial  figure  of  a  man  with  eminent 
nose,  bushy  brows  and  clear-flashing  eyes,  his  russet  beard  grow- 
ing daily  greyer,  is  visible,  engaged  in  true  governing  of  men. 
It  is  beautiful  how  the  chrysalis  governing-soul,  shaking  off  its 
dusty  slough  and  prison,  starts  forth  winged,  a  true  royal  soul! 
Our  new  Abbot  has  a  right  honest  unconscious  feeling,  without 
insolence  as  without  fear  or  flutter,  of  what  he  is  and  what  others 
are.  A  courage  to  quell  the  proudest,  an  honest  pity  to  encour- 
age the  humblest.  Withal  there  is  a  noble  reticence  in  this  Lord 
Abbot :  much  vain  unreason  he  hears  ;  lays  up  without  response. 
He  is  not  there  to  expect  reason  and  nobleness  of  others ;  he 
is  there  to  give  them  of  his  own  reason  and  nobleness.  Is  he  not 
their  servant,  as  we  said,  who  can  suffer  from  them,  and  for  them  ; 
bear  the  burden  their  poor  spindle-limbs  totter  and  stagger  under  ; 
and  in  virtue  thereof  govern  them,  lead  them  out  of  weakness  into 
strength,  out  of  defeat  into  victory  ! 
8* 


90  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

One  of  the  first  Herculean  Labours  Abbot  Samson  undertook, 
or  the  very  first,  was  to  institute  a  strenuous  review  and  radical 
reform  of  his  economics.  It  is  the  first  labour  of  every  govern- 
ing man,  from  Paterfamilias  to  Dominus  Bex.  To  get  the  rain 
thatched  out  from  you  is  the  preliminary  of  whatever  farther,  in 
the  way  of  speculation  or  of  action,  you  may  mean  to  do.  Old 
Abbot  Hugo's  budget,  as  we  saw,  had  become  empty,  filled  with 
deficit  and  wind.  To  see  his  account-books  clear,  be  delivered 
from  those  ravening  flights  of  Jew  and  Christian  creditors,  pounc- 
ing on  him  like  obscene  harpies  wherever  he  shewed  face,  was  a 
necessity  for  Abbot  Samson. 

On  the  morrow  after  his  instalment,  he  brings  in  a  load  of 
money-bonds,  all  duly  stamped,  sealed  with  this  or  the  other 
Convent  Seal:  frightful,  unmanageable,  a  bottomless  confusion  of 
Convent  finance.  There  they  are ;  —  but  there  at  least  they  all 
are  ;  all  that  shall  be  of  them.  Our  Lord  Abbot  demands  that  all 
the  official  seals  in  use  among  us  be  now  produced  and  delivered 
to  him.  Three-and-thirty  seals  turn  up  ;  are  straightway  broken, 
and  shall  seal  no  more  :  the  Abbot  only,  and  those  duly  author- 
ised by  him  shall  seal  any  bond.  There  are  but  two  ways  of  pay- 
ing debt ;  increase  of  industry  in  raising  income,  increase  of  thrift 
in  laying  it  out.  With  iron  energy,  in  slow  but  steady  unde- 
viating  perseverance,  Abbot  Samson  sets  to  work  in  both  direc- 
tions. His  troubles  are  manifold  :  cunning  milites,  unjust  bailiffs, 
lazy  sockmen,  he  an  inexperienced  Abbot ;  relaxed  lazy  monks, 
not  disinclined  to  mutiny  in  mass  :  but  continued  vigilance,  rigor- 
ous method,  what  we  call  '  the  eye  of  the  master,'  work  wonders. 
The  clear -beaming  eyesight  of  Abbot  Samson,  steadfast,  severe, 
all-penetrating,  — it  is  like  Fiat  lux  in  that  inorganic  waste  whirl- 
pool ;  penetrates  gradually  to  all  nooks,  and  of  the  chaos  makes  a 
kosmos  or  ordered  world  ! 

He  arranges  everywhere,  struggles  unweariedly  to  arrange, 
and  place  on  some  intelligible  footing,  the  '  affairs  and  dues,  res 
ac  reddititse  of  his  dominion.  The  Lakenheath  eels  cease  to 
breed  squabbles  between  human  beings  ;  the  penny  of  reap-silver 
to  explode  into  the  streets  the  Female  Chartism  of  St.  Edmunds- 
bury.  These  and  innumerable  greater  things.  Wheresoever 
Disorder  may  stand  or  lie,  let  it  have  a  care  ;  here  is  the  man  that 


GOVERNMENT.  91 

has  declared  war  with  it,  that  never  will  make  peace  with  it. 
Man  is  the  Missionary  of  Order  ;  he  is  the  servant  not  of  the 
Devil  and  Chaos,  but  of  God  and  the  Universe  !  Let  all  slug- 
gards and  cowards,  remiss,  false-spoken,  unjust,  and  otherwise 
diabolic  persons  have  a  care  :  this  is  a  dangerous  man  for  them. 
He  has  a  mild  grave  face  ;  a  thoughtful  sternness,  a  sorrowful 
pity  :  but  there  is  a  terrible  flash  of  anger  in  him  too  ;  lazy 
monks  often  have  to  murmur,  "  Scevit  ut  lupus,  He  rages  like  a 
wolf;  was  not  our  Dream  true  !"  '  To  repress  and  hold-in  such 
sudden  anger  he  was  continually  careful,'  and  succeeded  well :  — 
right,  Samson  ;  that  it  may  become  in  thee  as  noble  central  heat, 
fruitful,  strong,  beneficent ;  not  blaze  out,  or  the  seldomest  pos- 
sible blaze  out,  as  wasteful  volcanoism  to  scorch  and  consume  ! 

"  We  must  first  creep,  and  gradually  learn  to  walk,"  had  Ab- 
bot Samson  said  of  himself,  at  starting.  In  four  years  he  has 
become  a  great  walker  ;  striding  prosperously  along  ;  driving 
much  before  him.  In  less  than  four  years,  says  Jocelin,  the  Con- 
vent Debts  were  all  liquidated  :  the  harpy  Jews  not  only  settled 
with,  but  banished,  bag  and  baggage,  out  of  the  Bannaleuca  (Lib- 
erties, Banlieue)  of  St.  Edmundsbury,  —  so  has  the  King's  Ma- 
jesty been  persuaded  to  permit.  Farewell  to  you,  at  any  rate  ; 
let  us,  in  no  extremity,  apply  again  to  you  !  Armed  men  march 
them  over  the  borders,  dismiss  them  under  stern  penalties,  — 
sentence  of  excommunication  on  all  that  shall  again  harbour  them 
here  :  there  were  many  dry  eyes  at  their  departure. 

New  life  enters  everywhere,  springs  up  beneficent,  the  Incubus 
of  Debt  once  rolled  away.  Samson  hastes  not ;  but  neither  does 
he  pause  to  rest.  This  of  the  Finance  is  a  life-long  business 
with  him  ; — Jocelin 's  anecdotes  are  filled  to  weariness  with  it. 
As  indeed  to  Jocelin  it  was  of  very  primary  interest. 

But  we  have  to  record  also,  with  a  lively  satisfaction,  that 
spiritual  rubbish  is  as  little  tolerated  in  Samson's  Monastery  as 
material.  With  due  rigour,  Willelmus  Sacrista,  and  his  bibations 
and  tacenda  are,  at  the  earliest  opportunity,  softly,  yet  irrevocably 
put  an  end  to.  The  bibations,  namely,  had  to  end ;  even  the 
building  where  they  used  to  be  carried  on  was  razed  from  the  soil 
of  St.  Edmundsbury,  and  '  on  its  place  grow  rows  of  beans :' 


92  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Willelmus  himself,  deposed  from  the  Sacristry  and  all  offices, 
retires  into  obscurity,  into  absolute  taciturnity  unbroken  thence- 
forth to  this  hour.  Whether  the  poor  Willelmus  did  not  still,  by 
secret  channels,  occasionally  get  some  slight  wetting  of  vinous  or 
alcoholic  liquor,  —  now  grown,  in  a  manner,  indispensable  to  the 
poor  man  ?  Jocelin  hints  not ;  one  knows  not  how  to  hope,  what 
to  hope  !  But  if  he  did,  it  was  in  silence  and  darkness  ;  with  an 
ever-present  feeling  that  teetotalism  was  his  only  true  course. 
Drunken  dissolute  Monks  are  a  class  of  persons  who  had  better 
keep  out  of  Abbot  Samson's  way.  Stevit  ut  lupus ;  was  not  the 
Dream  true  !  murmured  many  a  Monk.  Nay  Ranulf  de  Glanville, 
Justiciary  in  Chief,  took  umbrage  at  him,  seeing  these  strict  ways ; 
and  watched  farther  with  suspicion  :  but  discerned  gradually  that 
there  was  nothing  wrong,  that  there  was  much  the  opposite  of 
wrong. 


CHAPTER  XL 


THE    ABBOTS    WAYS. 


Abbot  Samson  shewed  no  extraordinary  favour  to  the  Monks 
who  had  been  his  familiars  of  old ;  did  not  promote  them  to  of- 
fices, —  nisi  essent  idonei,  unless  they  chanced  to  be  fit  men  ! 
Whence  great  discontent  among  certain  of  these,  who  had  con- 
tributed to  make  him  Abbot :  reproaches,  open  and  secret,  of  his 
being  '  ungrateful,  hard-tempered,  unsocial,  a  Norfolk  barrator 
and  paltenerius.' 

Indeed,  except  it  were  for  idonei,  l  fit  men,'  in  all  kinds,  it  was 
hard  to  say  for  whom  Abbot  Samson  had  much  favour.  He  loved 
his  kindred  well,  and  tenderly  enough  acknowledged  the  poor 
part  of  them  ;  with  the  rich  part,  who  in  old  days  had  never  ac- 
knowledged him,  he  totally  refused  to  have  any  business.  But 
even  the  former  he  did  not  promote  into  offices ;  finding  none  of 
them  idonei.  '  Some  whom  he  thought  suitable  he  put  into  situ- 
'  ations  in  his  own  household,  or  made  keepers  of  his  country 
'  places  :  if  they  behaved  ill,  he  dismissed  them  without  hope  of 
'  return.'  In  his  promotions,  nay  almost  in  his  benefits,  you 
would  have  said  there  was  a  certain  impartiality.  '  The  official 
1  person  who  had,  by  Abbot  Hugo's  order,  put  the  fetters  on  him 
'  at  his  return  from  Italy,  was  now  supported  with  food  and 
'  clothes  to  the  end  of  his  days  at  Abbot  Samson's  expense.' 

Yet  he  did  not  forget  benefits  :  far  the  reverse,  when  an  oppor- 
tunity occurred  of  paying  them  at  his  own  cost.  How  pay  them 
at  the  public  cost ;  —  how,  above  all,  by  setting  fire  to  the  public, 
as  we  said  ;  clapping  '  conflagrations  '  on  the  public,  which  the 
services  of  blockheads,  non-idonei,  intrinsically  are !  He  was 
right  willing  to  remember  friends,  when  it  could  be  done.  Take 
these  instances  :  '  A  certain  chaplain  who  had  maintained  him  at 


94  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

1  the  Schools  of  Paris  by  the  sale  of  holy  water,  quastu  aqua 
'  benedictce ;  —  to  this  good  chaplain  he  did  give  a  vicarage,  ade- 
1  quate  to  the  comfortable  sustenance  of  him.'  'The  Son  of 
1  Elias,  too,  that  is,  of  old  Abbot  Hugo's  Cupbearer,  coming  to 
1  do  homage  for  his  Father's  land,  our  Lord  Abbot  said  to  him  in 
1  full  court :  "I  have,  for  these  seven  years,  put  off  taking  thy 
'  homage  for  the  land  which  Abbot  Hugo  gave  thy  Father,  be- 
'  cause  that  gift  was  to  the  damage  of  Elmswell,  and  a  question- 
1  able  one  :  but  now  I  must  profess  myself  overcome  ;  mindful  of 
'  the  kindness  thy  Father  did  me  when  I  was  in  bonds  ;  because 
'  he  sent  me  a  cup  of  the  very  wine  his  master  had  been  drinking, 
1  and  bade  me  be  comforted  in  God."  ' 

'  To  Magister  Walter,  son  of  Magister  William  de  Dice,  who 
'  wanted  the  vicarage  of  Chevington,  he  answered  :  "Thy  Fa- 
'  ther  was  Master  of  the  Schools ;  and  when  I  was  an  indigent 
1  clericus,  he  granted  me  freely  and  in  charity  an  entrance  to  his 
'  School,  and  opportunity  of  learning  ;  wherefore  I  now,  for  the 
'  sake  of  God,  grant  to  thee  what  thou  askest."  '  Or  lastly,  take 
this  good  instance,  —  and  a  glimpse,  along  with  it,  into  long-obso- 
lete times  :  '  Two  Milites  of  Risby,  Willelm  and  Norman,  being 
1  adjudged  in  Court  to  come  under  his  mercy,  in  miser icordia  ejus,3 
for  a  certain  very  considerable  fine  of  twenty  shillings,  '  he  thus 
'  addressed  them  publicly  on  the  spot  :  "  When  I  was  a  Cloister- 
'  monk,  I  was  once  sent  to  Durham  on  business  of  our  Church  ; 
1  and  coming  home  again,  the  dark  night  caught  me  at  Risby, 
'  and  I  had  to  beg  a  lodging  there.  I  went  to  Dominus  Norman's, 
1  and  he  gave  me  a  flat  refusal.  Going  then  to  Dominus  Wil- 
1  lelm's,  and  begging  hospitality,  I  was  by  him  honourably  re- 
'  ceived.  The  twenty  shillings  therefore  of  mercy,  I,  without 
'  mercy,  will  exact  from  Dominus  Norman  ;  to  Dominus  Willelm, 
'  on  the  other  hand,  I,  with  thanks,  will  wholly  remit  the  said 
'  sum."  '  Men  know  not  always  to  whom  they  refuse  lodgings  ; 
men  have  lodged  Angels  unawares  !  — 

It  is  clear  Abbot  Samson  had  a  talent ;  he  had  learned  to  judge 
better  than  Lawyers,  to  manage  better  than  bred  Bailiffs  :  —  a 
talent  shining  out  indisputable,  on  whatever  side  you  took  him. 
1  An  eloquent  man  he  was,'   says  Jocelin,   '  both  in  French  and 


the  abbot's  ways.  95 

'  Latin  ;  but  intent  more  on  the  substance  and  method  of  what 
'  was  to  be  said,  than  on  the  ornamental  way  of  saying  it.  He 
'  could  read  English  Manuscripts  very  elegantly,  elegantissime : 
1  he  was  wont  to  preach  to  the  people  in  the  English  tongue, 
'  though  according  to  the  dialect  of  Norfolk,  where  he  had  been 
'  brought  up ;  wherefore  indeed  he  had  caused  a  Pulpit  to  be 
'  erected  in  our  Church  both  for  ornament  of  the  same,  and  for 
'  the  use  of  his  audiences.'  There  preached  he,  according  to  the 
dialect  of  Norfolk :  a  man  worth  going  to  hear. 

That  he  was  a  just  clear-hearted  man,  this,  as  the  basis  of  all 
true  talent,  is  presupposed.  How  can  a  man,  without  clear  vision 
in  his  heart  first  of  all,  have  any  clear  vision  in  the  head?  It  is 
impossible  !  Abbot  Samson  was  one  of  the  justest  of  judges  ; 
insisted  on  understanding  the  case  to  the  bottom,  and  then  swiftly 
decided  without  feud  or  favour.  For  which  reason,  indeed,  the 
Dominus  Rex,  searching  for  such  men,  as  for  hidden  treasure  and 
healing  to  his  distressed  realm,  had  made  him  one  of  the  new 
Itinerant  Judges,  —  such  as  continue  to  this  day.  "  My  curse  on 
that  Abbot's  court,"  a  suitor  was  heard  imprecating,  "  Maledicta 
sit  curia  istius  Abbatis,  where  neither  gold  nor  silver  can  help  me 
to  confound  my  enemy  !  ' '  And  old  friendships  and  all  connexions 
forgotten,  when  you  go  to  seek  an  office  from  him  !  "A  kinless 
loon,"  as  the  Scotch  said  of  Cromwell's  new  judges,  —  intent  on 
mere  indifferent  fair-play  ! 

Eloquence  in  three  languages  is  good  ;  but  it  is  not  the  best. 
To  us,  as  already  hinted,  the  Lord  Abbott's  eloquence  is  less 
admirable  than  his  ^eloquence,  his  great  invaluable  '  talent  of 
silence  !  '  '  "  Deus,  Deus"  said  the  Lord  Abbot  to  me  once,  when 
'  he  heard  the  Convent  were  murmuring  at  some  act  of  his,  "  I 
'  have  much  need  to  remember  that.  Dream  they  had  of  me,  that  I 
'  was  to  rage  among  them  like  a  wolf.  Above  all  earthly  things 
'  I  dread  their  driving  me  to  do  it.  How  much  do  I  hold  in,  and 
'  wink  at :  raging  and  shuddering  in  my  own  secret  mind,  and 
'  not  outwardly  at  all !  "  He  would  boast  to  me  at  other  times  : 
'  "  This  and  that  I  have  seen,  this  and  that  I  have  heard  ;  yet 
'  patiently  stood  it."  He  had  this  way,  too,  which  I  have  never 
1  seen  in  any  other  man,  that  he  affectionately  loved  many  persons 
1  to  whom  he  never  or  hardly  ever  shewed  a  countenance  of  love. 


96  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

'  Once  on  my  venturing  to  expostulate  with  him  on  the  subject, 
'  he  reminded  me  of  Solomon  :  "  Many  sons  I  have  ;  it  is  not  fit 
'  that  I  should  smile  on  them."  He  would  sutler  faults,  damage 
'  from  his  servants,  and  know  what  he  suffered,  and  not  speak  of 
'  it ;  but  I  think  the  reason  was,  he  waited  a  good  time  for  speak- 
1  ing  of  it,  and  in  a  wise  way  amending  it.  He  intimated,  openly 
'  in  chapter  to  us  all,  that  he  would  have  no  eavesdropping  :  "  Let 
'  none,"  said  he,  "  come  to  me  secretly  accusing  another,  unless 
'  he  will  publicly  stand  to  the  same  ;  if  he  come  otherwise,  I  will 
'  openly  proclaim  the  name  of  him.  I  wish,  too,  that  every  Monk 
'  of  you  have  free  access  to  me,  to  speak  of  your  needs  or  griev- 
'  ances  when  you  will."  ' 

The  kinds  of  people  Abbot  Samson  liked  worst  were  these 
three  :  '  Me?idaces,  ebriosi,  verbosi,  Liars,  drunkards,  and  wordy  or 
windy  persons  ;  '  — not  good  kinds,  any  of  them  !  He  also  much 
condemned  '  persons  given  to  murmur  at  their  meat  or  drink, 
'  especially  Monks  of  that  disposition.'  We  remark,  from  the 
very  first,  his  strict  anxious  order  to  his  servants  to  provide  hand- 
somely for  hospitality,  to  guard  '  above  all  things  that  there  be 
'  no  shabbiness  in  the  matter  of  meat  and  drink  ;  no  look  of  mean 
'  parsimony,  in  novitate  mea,  at  the  beginning  of  my  Abbotship  ;  ' 
and  to  the  last  he  maintains  a  due  opulence  of  table  and  equipment 
for  others  :  but  he  is  himself  in  the  highest  degree  indifferent  to 
all  such  things. 

'  Sweet  milk,  honey,  and  other  naturally  sweet  kinds  of  food, 
1  were  what  he  preferred  to  eat  :  but  he  had  this  virtue,'  says 
Jocelin,  'he  never  changed  the  dish  (ferculum)  you  set  before 
'  him,  be  what  it  might.  Once  when  I,  still  a  novice,  happened 
'  to  be  waiting  table  in  the  refectory,  it  came  into  my  head  ' 
(rogue  that  I  was!)  '  to  try  if  this  were  true  ;  and  I  thought  I 
'  would  place  before  him  a  ferculum  that  would  have  displeased 
1  any  other  person,  the  very  platter  being  black  and  broken.  But 
'  he,  seeing  it,  was  as  one  that  saw  it  not  :  and  now  some  little 
1  delay  taking  place,  my  heart  smote  me  that  I  had  done  this  ; 
'  and  so,  snatching  up  the  platter  (discus),  I  changed  both  it  and 
'  its  contents  for  a  better,  and  put  down  that  instead  ;  which 
'  emendation  he  was  angry  at,  and  rebuked  me  for,'  — the  stoical 
monastic  man  !     '  For  the  first  seven  years  he  had  commonly  four 


the  abbot's  ways.  97 

'  sorts  of  dishes  on  his  table ;  afterwards  only  three,  except  it 
'  might  be  presents,  or  venison  from  his  own  parks,  or  fishes  from 
'his  ponds.  And  if,  at  any  time,  he  had  guests  living  in  his 
'  house  at  the  request  of  some  great  person,  or  of  some  friend,  or 
'had  public  messengers,  or  had  harpers  (citharcedos) ,  or  any  one 
'  of  that  sort,  he  took  the  first  opportunity  of  shifting  to  another  of 
'  his  Manor-houses,  and  so  got  rid  of  such  superfluous  individ- 
'  uals,'  *  — very  prudently,  I  think. 

As  to  his  parks,  of  these,  in  the  general  repair  of  buildings, 
general  improvement  and  adornment  of  the  St.  Edmund  Domains, 
'  he  had  laid  out  several,  and  stocked  them  with  animals,  retaining 
'  a  proper  huntsman  with  hounds  :  and,  if  any  guest  of  great 
'  quality  were  there,  our  Lord  Abbot  with  his  Monks  would  sit  in 
'  some  opening  of  the  woods,  and  see  the  dogs  run  ;  but  he  him- 
'  self  never  meddled  with  hunting,  that  I  saw.'  f 

'  In  an  opening  of  the  woods ;'  —  for  the  country  was  still  dark 
with  wood  in  those  days ;  and  Scotland  itself  still  rustled  shaggy 
and  leafy,  like  a  damp  black  American  Forest,  with  cleared  spots 
and  spaces  here  and  there.  Dryasdust  advances  several  absurd 
hypotheses  as  to  the  insensible  but  almost  total  disappearance  of 
these  woods  ;  the  thick  wreck  of  which  now  lies  as  peat,  sometimes 
with  huge  heart-of-oak  timber  logs  imbedded  in  it,  on  many  a  height 
and  hollow.  The  simplest  reason  doubtless  is,  that  by  increase  of 
husbandry,  there  was  increase  of  cattle  ;  increase  of  hunger  for 
green  spring  food  ;  and  so,  more  and  more,  the  new  seedlings  got 
yearly  eaten  out  in  April ;  and  the  old  trees,  having  only  a  certain 
length  of  life  in  them,  died  gradually,  no  man  heeding  it,  and 
disappeared  into  peat. 

A  sorrowful  waste  of  noble  wood  and  umbrage  !  Yes,  —  but  a 
very  common  one ;  the  course  of  most  things  in  this  world. 
Monachism  itself,  so  rich  and  fruitful  once,  is  now  all  rotted  into 
peat;  lies  sleek  and  buried,  —  and  a  most  feeble  bog-grass  of 
Dilettantism  all  the  crop  we  reap  from  it !  That  also  was  fright- 
ful waste  ;  perhaps  among  the  saddest  our  England  ever  saw. 
Why  will  men  destroy  noble  Forests,  even  when  in  part  a  nui- 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  31.  t  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  21. 

9 


98  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

sance,  in  such  reckless  manner  ;  turning  loose  four-footed  cattle 
and  Henry-the-Eighths  into  them  !  The  fifth  part  of  our  English 
soil,  Dryasdust  computes,  lay  consecrated  to  '  spiritual  uses,'  bet- 
ter or  worse  :  solemnly  set  apart  to  foster  spiritual  growth  and 
culture  of  the  soul,  by  the  methods  then  known  :  and  now  —  it 
too,  like  the  four-fifths,  fosters  what?  Gentle  shepherd,  tell  me 
what! 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    ABBOT'S    TROUBLES. 

The  troubles  of  Abbot  Samson,  as  he  went  along-  in  this  abstemi- 
ous, reticent,  rigorous  way,  were  more  than  tongue  can  tell.  The 
Abbot's  mitre  once  set  on  his  head,  he  knew  rest  no  more.  Dou- 
ble, double,  toil  and  trouble  ;  that  is  the  life  of  all  governors  that 
really  govern  :  not  the  spoil  of  victory,  only  the  glorious  toil  of 
battle  can  be  theirs.  Abbot  Samson  found  all  men  more  or  less 
headstrong,  irrational,  prone  to  disorder  ;  continually  threatening 
to  prove  wwgovernable. 

His  lazy  Monks  gave  him  most  trouble.  '  My  heart  is  tortured,' 
said  he,  '  till  we  get  out  of  debt,  cor  meum  cruciatum  est.''  Your 
heart,  indeed  ;  —  but  not  altogether  ours  !  By  no  devisable  meth- 
od, or  none  of  three  or  four  that  he  devised,  could  Abbot  Samson 
get  these  Monks  of  his  to  keep  their  accounts  straight ;  but  al- 
ways, do  as  he  might,  the  Cellerarius  at  the  end  of  the  term  is  in 
a  coil,  in  a  flat  deficit,  —  verging  again  towards  debt  and  Jews. 
The  Lord  Abbot  at  last  declares  sternly  he  will  keep  our  accounts 
too  himself;  will  appoint  an  officer  of  his  own  to  see  our  Cellera- 
rius keep  them.  Murmurs  thereupon  among  us  :  Was  the  like 
ever  heard  1  Our  Cellerarius  a  cipher  ;  the  very  Townsfolk  know 
it :  subsannatio  et  derisio  sumus,  we  have  become  a  laughingstock 
to  mankind.    The  Norfolk  barrator  and  paltener ! 

And  consider,  if  the  Abbot  found  such  difficulty  in  the  mere 
economic  department,  how  much  in  more  complex  ones,  in  spiritual 
ones  perhaps  !  He  wears  a  stern  calm  face  ;  raging  and  gnashing 
teeth,  fremens  and  frendens,  many  times,  in  the  secret  of  his 
mind.  Withal,  however,  there  is  a  noble  slow  perseverance  in 
him  ;  a  strength  of  '  subdued  rage '  calculated  to  subdue  most 
things  :  always,  in  the  long-run,  he  contrives  to  gain  his  point. 


100  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Murmurs  from  the  Monks,  meanwhile,  cannot  fail ;  ever  deeper 
murmurs,  new  grudges  accumulating.  At  one  time,  on  slight 
cause,  some  drop  making  the  cup  run  over,  they  burst  into  open 
mutiny  :  the  Cellarer  will  not  obey,  prefers  arrest  on  bread  and 
water  to  obeying  ;  the  Monks  thereupon  strike  work ;  refuse  to  do 
the  regular  chanting  of  the  day,  at  least  the  younger  part  of  them 
with  loud  clamour  and  uproar  refuse  :  —  Abbot  Samson  has  with- 
drawn to  another  residence,  acting  only  by  messengers  :  the  awful 
report  circulates  through  St.  Edmundsbury  that  the  Abbot  is  in 
danger  of  being  murdered  by  the  Monks  with  their  knives !  How 
wilt  thou  appease  this,  Abbot  Samson  ?  Return  ;  for  the  Monas- 
tery seems  near  catching  fire  ! 

Abbot  Samson  returns  ;  sits  in  his  Thalamus  or  inner  room, 
hurls  out  a  bolt  or  two  of  excommunication  :  lo,  one  disobedient 
Monk  sits  in  limbo,  excommunicated,  with  foot-shackles  on  him, 
all  day  ;  and  three  more  our  Abbot  has  gyved  '  with  the  lesser 
sentence,  to  strike  fear  into  the  others  !  '  Let  the  others  think 
with  whom  they  have  to  do.  The  others  think  ;  and  fear  enters 
into  them.  '  On  the  morrow  morning  we  decide  on  humbling  our- 
1  selves  before  the  Abbot,  by  word  and  gesture,  in  order  to  miti- 
'  gate  his  mind.  And  so  accordingly  was  done.  He,  on  the 
'  other  side,  replying  with  much  humility,  yet  always  alleging  his 
'  own  justice  and  turning  the  blame  on  us,  when  he  saw  that  we 
'  were  conquered,  became  himself  conquered.  And  bursting  into 
'  tears,  perfusus  lachrymis,  he  swore  that  he  had  never  grieved  so 
1  much  for  anything  in  the  world  as  for  this,  first  on  his  own  ac- 
1  count,  and  then  secondly  and  chiefly  for  the  public  scandal  which 
'  had  gone  abroad,  that  St.  Edmund's  Monks  were  going  to  kill 
'  their  Abbot.  And  when  he  had  narrated  how  he  went  away  on 
'  purpose  till  his  anger  should  cool,  repeating  this  word  of  the 
'  philosopher,  "  I  would  have  taken  vengeance  on  thee,  had  not  I 
'  been  angry,"  he  arose  weeping,  and  embraced  each  and  all  of 
'  us  with  the  kiss  of  peace.  He  wept ;  we  all  wept :  '  #  — what 
a  picture  !  Behave  better,  ye  remiss  Monks,  and  thank  Heaven 
for  such  an  Abbot ;  or  know  at  least  that  ye  must  and  shall  obey 
him. 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  85. 


THE  ABBOT'S  TROUBLES.  101 

Worn  down  in  this  manner,  with  incessant  toil  and  tribulation, 
Abbot  Samson  had  a  sore  time  of  it  ;  his  grizzled  hair  and  beard 
grew  daily  greyer.  Those  Jews,  in  the  first  four  years,  had  '  visi- 
bly emaciated  him  :  '  Time,  Jews,  and  the  task  of  Governing, 
will  make  a  man's  beard  very  grey !  '  In  twelve  years,'  says 
Jocelin,  '  our  Lord  Abbot  had  grown  wholly  white  as  snow,  tolus 
efficitur  alius  sicut  nix.''  White,  atop,  like  the  granite  mountains  : 
—  but  his  clear-beaming  eyes  still  look  out,  in  their  stern  clear- 
ness, in  their  sorrow  and  pity  ;  the  heart  within  him  remains  un- 
conquered. 

Nay  sometimes  there  are  gleams  of  hilarity  too  ;  little  snatches 
of  encouragement  granted  even  to  a  Governor.  '  Once  my  Lord 
'  Abbot  and  I,  coming  down  from  London  through  the  Forest,  I 
'  inquired  of  an  old  woman  whom  we  came  up  to,  Whose  wood 
'  this  was,  and  of  what  manor ;  who  the  master,  who  the 
'  keeper? '  —  All  this  I  knew  very  well  beforehand,  and  my  Lord 
Abbot  too,  Bozzy  that  I  was  !  But  '  the  old  woman  answered, 
'  The  wood  belonged  to  the  new  Abbot  of  St.  Edmund's,  was  of 
1  the  manor  of  Harlow,  and  the  keeper  of  it  was  one  Arnald. 
'  How  did  he  behave  to  the  people  of  the  manor?  I  asked  farther. 
'  She  answered  that,  he  used  to  be  a  devil  incarnate,  dcemonvivus, 
1  an  enemy  of  God,  and  flayer  of  the  peasants'  skins,'  — skinning 
them  like  live  eels,  as  the  manner  of  some  is  :  '  but  that  now  he 
'  dreads  the  new  Abbot,  knowing  him  to  be  a  wise  and  sharp 
'  man,  and  so  treats  the  people  reasonably,  tractat  homines  paci- 
1  jiceS  Whereat  the  Lord  Abbot  f actus  est  hilaris,  —  could  not 
but  take  a  triumphant  laugh  for  himself;  and  determines  to  leave 
that  Harlow  manor  yet  unmeddled  with,  for  a  while.* 

A  brave  man,  strenuously  fighting,  fails  not  of  a  little  triumph, 
now  and  then,  to  keep  him  in  heart.  Everywhere  we  try  at 
least  to  give  the  adversary  as  good  as  he  brings  ;  and,  with  swift 
force  or  slow  watchful  manoeuvre,  extinguish  this  and  the  other 
solecism,  leave  one  solecism  less  in  God's  Creation  ;  and  so  pro- 
ceed with  our  battle,  not  slacken  or  surrender  in  it !  The  Fifty 
feudal  Knights,  for  example,  were  of  unjust  greedy  temper,  and 
cheated  us,   in  the   Installation-day,  of  ten  knights'-fees  : — but 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  24. 
9* 


102  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

they  know  now  whether  that  has  profited  them  aught,  and  I  Joce- 
lin  know.  Our  Lord  Abbot  for  the  moment  had  to  endure  it,  and 
say  nothing ;  but  he  watched  his  time. 

Look  also  how  my  Lord  of  Clare,  coming  to  claim  his  wndue 
1  debt  '  in  the  Court  at  Witham,  with  barons  and  apparatus,  gets 
a  Rowland  for  his  Oliver  !  Jocelin  shall  report :  'The  Earl, 
'  crowded  round  (constipatas)  with  many  barons  and  men  at  arms, 
'  Earl  Alberic  and  others  standing  by  him,  said,  "  That  his  bail- 
1  iffs  had  given  him  to  understand  they  were  wont  annually  to 
'  receive'  for  his  behoof,  from  the  Hundred  of  Risebridge  and  the 
'  bailiffs  thereof,  a  sum  of  five  shillings,  which  sum  was  now 
'  unjustly  held  back  ;  "  and  he  alleged  farther  that  his  predeces- 
1  sors  had  been  infeft,  at  the  Conquest,  in  the  lands  of  Alfric  son 
'  of  Wisgar,  who  was  Lord  of  that  Hundred,  as  may  be  read  in 
1  Domesday  Book  by  all  persons.  —  The  Abbot,  reflecting  for  a 
'moment,  without  stirring  from  his  place,  made  answer:  "A 
'wonderful  deficit,  my  Lord  Earl,  this  that  thou  mentionest! 
'  King  Edward  gave  to  St.  Edmund  that  entire  Hundred,  and 
'confirmed  the  same  with  his  Charter ;  nor  is  there  any  mention 
'  there  of  those  five  shillings.  It  will  behove  thee  to  say,  for  what 
'  service,  or  on  what  ground,  thou  exactest  those  five  shillings." 
'  Whereupon  the  Earl,  consulting  with  his  followers,  replied, 
'  That  he  had  to  carry  the  Banner  of  St.  Edmund  in  war-time, 
'  and  for  this  duty  the  five  shillings  were  his.  To  which  the 
'  Abbot :  "  Certainly,  it  seems  inglorious,  if  so  great  a  man,  Earl 
'  of  Clare  no  less,  receive  so  small  a  gift  for  such  a  service.  To 
'  the  Abbot  of  St.  Edmund's  it  is  no  unbearable  burden  to  give 
'  five  shillings.  But  Roger  Earl  Bigot  holds  himself  duly  seised, 
'  and  asserts  that  he  by  such  seisin  has  the  office  of  carrying  St. 
'  Edmund's  Banner  ;  and  he  did  carry  it  when  the  Earl  of  Leices- 
'  ter  and  his  Flemings  were  beaten  at  Fornham.  Then  again 
'  Thomas  de  Mendham  says  that  the  right  is  his.  When  you 
'  have  made  out  with  one  another,  that  this  right  is  thine,  come 
'  then  and  claim  the  five  shillings,  and  I  will  promptly  pay 
'  them  !  "  Whereupon  the  Earl  said,  He  would  speak  with  Earl 
'  Roger  his  relative  ;  and  so  the  matter  cepit  delationemj  and  lies 
undecided  to  the  end  of  the  world.  Abbot  Samson  answers  by 
word  or  act,  in  this  or  the  like  pregnant  manner,  having  justice  on 


the  abbot's  troubles.  103 

his  side,  innumerable  persons  :  Pope's  Legates,  King's  Viscounts, 
Canterbury  Archbishops,  Cellarers,  Sochemanni ;  —  and  leaves 
many  a  solecism  extinguished. 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  is  and  remains  sore  work.  '  One 
'  time,  during  my  chaplaincy,  I  ventured  to  say  to  him  :  "  Domi- 
'  ne,  I  heard  thee,  this  night  after  matins,  wakeful,  and  sighing 
'  deeply,  valde  suspirantem,  contrary  to  thy  usual  wont."  He  an- 
'  swered  ;  "  No  wonder.  Thou,  son  Jocelin,  sharest  in  my  good 
'  things,  in  food  and  drink,  in  riding  and  such  like  ;  but  thou  little 
'  thinkest  concerning  the  management  of  House  and  Family,  the 
'  various  and  arduous  businesses  of  the  Pastoral  Care,  which  ha- 
'  rass  me,  and  make  my  soul  to  sigh  and  be  anxious."  Whereto 
'  I,  lifting  up  my  hands  to  Heaven  :  "  From  such  anxiety,  Om- 
'  nipotent  Merciful  Lord  deliver  me  !  "  —  I  have  heard  the  Abbot 
'  say,  If  he  had  been  as  he  was  before  he  became  a  Monk,  and 
'  could  have  anywhere  got  five  or  six  marcs  of  income,'  some 
three  pound  ten  of  yearly  revenue,  '  whereby  to  support  himself 
'  in  the  schools,  he  would  never  have  been  Monk  nor  Abbot. 
'  Another  time  he  said  with  an  oath,  If  he  had  known  what  a 
'  business  it  was  to  govern  the  Abbey,  he  would  rather  have  been 
'  Almoner,  how  much  rather  Keeper  of  the  Books,  than  Abbot 
'  and  Lord.  That  latter  office  he  said  he  had  always  longed  for, 
'  beyond  any  other.  Quis  talia  crederet,'  concludes  Jocelin,  '  Who 
'  can  believe  such  things  ?  ' 

Three  pound  ten,  and  a  life  of  Literature,  especially  of  quiet 
Literature,  without  copyright,  or  world-celebrity  of  literary- 
gazettes, —  yes,  thou 'brave  Abbot  Samson,  for  thyself  it  had 
been  better,  easier,  perhaps  also  nobler !  But  then,  for  thy  diso- 
bedient Monks,  unjust  Viscounts  ;  for  a  Domain  of  St.  Edmund 
overgrown  with  Solecisms,  human  and  other,  it  had  not  been  so 
well.  Nay  neither  could  thy  Literature,  never  so  quiet,  have  been 
easy.  Literature,  when  noble,  is  not  easy  ;  but  only  when  igno- 
ble. Literature  too  is  a  quarrel,  and  internecine  duel,  with  the 
whole  World  of  Darkness  that  lies  without  one  and  within  one  ; 
—  rather  a  hard  fight  at  times,  even  with  the  three  pound  ten  se- 
cure. Thou,  there  where  thou  art,  wrestle  and  duel  along,  cheer- 
fully to  the  end ;  and  make  no  remarks  ! 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


IN    PARLIAMENT. 


Of  Abbot  Samson's  public  business  we  say  little,  though  that 
also  was  great.  He  had  to  judge  the  people  as  Justice  Errant, 
to  decide  in  weighty  arbitrations  and  public  controversies  ;  to 
equip  his  milites,  send  them  duly  in  war-time  to  the  King ;  — 
strive  every  way  that  the  Commonweal,  in  his  quarter  of  it,  take 
no  damage. 

Once,  in  the  confused  days  of  Lackland's  usurpation,  while  Cceur- 
de-Lion  was  away,  our  brave  Abbot  took  helmet  himself,  having 
first  excommunicated  all  that  should  favour  Lackland ;  and  led  his 
men  in  person  to  the  siege  of  Wmdleshora,  what  we  now  call 
Windsor  ;  where  Lackland  had  entrenched  himself,  the  centre  of 
infinite  confusions ;  some  Reform  Bill,  then  as  now,  being  greatly 
needed.  There  did  Abbot  Samson  '  fight  the  battle  of  reform,'  — 
with  other  ammunition,  one  hopes,  then  '  tremendous  cheering  ' 
and  such  like  !  For  these  things  he  was  called  '  the  magnanimous 
Abbot.' 

He  also  attended  duly  in  his  place  in  Parliament  de  arduis  regni; 
attended  especially,  as  in  arduissimo ,  when  '  the  news  reached 
London  that  King  Richard  was  a  captive  in  Germany.'  Here 
'  while  all  the  barons  sat  to  consult,'  and  many  of  them  looked 
blank  enough,  '  the  Abbot  started  forth,  prosiliit  coram  omnibus, 
'  in  his  place  in  Parliament,  and  said,  That  he  was  ready  to  go  and 
1  seek  his  Lord  the  King,  either  clandestinely  by  subterfuge  {in 
1  tapinagio),  or  by  any  other  method  ;  and  search  till  he  found 
1  him,  and  got  certain  notice  of  him ;  he  for  one  !  By  which 
1  word,'  says  Jocelin,  '  he  acquired  great  praise  for  himself,'  — 
unfeigned  commendation  from  the  Able  Editors  of  that  age. 

By  which  word  ;  —  and  also  by  which  deed:   for  the  Abbot  ac- 


IN    PARLIAMENT.  105 

tually  went  '  with  rich  gifts  to  the  King  in  Germany  ;'*  Usurper 
Lackland  being  first  rooted  out  from  Windsor,  and  the  King's 
peace  somewhat  settled. 

As  to  these  '  rich  gifts,'  however,  we  have  to  note  one  thing  : 
In  all  England,  as  appeared  to  the  Collective  Wisdom,  there  was 
not  like  to  be  treasure  enough  for  ransoming  King  Richard  ;  in 
which  extremity  certain  Lords  of  the  Treasury,  Jusliciarii  ad 
Scaccarium,  suggested  that  St.  Edmund's  Shrine,  covered  with 
thick  gold,  was  still  untouched.  Could  not  it,  in  this  extremity, 
be  peeled  off,  at  least  in  part ;  under  condition,  of  course,  of  its 
being  replaced,  when  times  mended  1  The  Abbot,  starting  plumb 
up,  se  erigens,  answered  :  "  Know  ye  for  certain,  that  I  will  in 
no  wise  do  this  thing  ;  nor  is  there  any  man  who  could  force  me 
to  consent  thereto.  But  I  will  open  the  doors  of  the  Church  : 
Let  him  that  likes  enter ;  let  him  that  dares  come  forward  !" 
Emphatic  words,  which  created  a  sensation  round  the  woolsack. 
For  the  Justiciaries  of  the  Scaccarium  answered,  '  with  oaths, 
'  each  for  himself:  "  I  won't  come  forward,  for  my  share  ;  nor 
'  will  I,  nor  I !  The  distant  and  absent  who  offended  him,  Saint 
1  Edmund  has  been  known  to  punish  fearfully  ;  much  more  will 
'  he  those  close  by,  who  lay  violent  hands  on  his  coat,  and  would 
1  strip  it  off!"  These  things  being  said,  the  Shrine  was  not  med- 
'  died  with,  nor  any  ransom  levied  for  it.'  f 

For  Lords  of  the  Treasury  have  in  all  times  their  impassable 
limits,  be  it  by  '  force  of  public  opinion '  or  otherwise  ;  and  in 
those  days  a  Heavenly  Awe  overshadowed  and  encompassed,  as 
it  still  ought  and  must,  all  earthly  Business  whatsoever. 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  pp.  39, 40.  t  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  71. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


HENRY    OF    ESSEX. 


Of  St.  Edmund's  fearful  avengements  have  they  not  the  remark- 
ablest  instance  still  before  their  eyes  1  He  that  will  go  to  Reading 
Monastery  may  find  there,  now  tonsured  into  a  mournful  penitent 
Monk,  the  once  proud  Henry  Earl  of  Essex  ;  and  discern  how  St. 
Edmund  punishes  terribly,  yet  with  mercy !  This  Narrative  is 
too  significant  to  be  omitted  as  a  document  of  the  Time.  Our 
Lord  Abbot,  once  on  a  visit  at  Reading,  heard  the  particulars 
from  Henry's  own  mouth  ;  and  thereupon  charged  one  of  his 
monks  to  write  it  down  ;  —  as  accordingly  the  Monk  has  done,  in 
ambitious  rhetorical  Latin  ;  inserting  the  same,  as  episode,  among 
Jocelin's  garrulous  leaves.  Read  it  here  ;  with  ancient  yet  with 
modern  eyes. 

Henry  Earl  of  Essex,  standard-bearer  of  England,  had  high 
places  and  emoluments  ;  had  a  haughty  high  soul,  yet  with  vari- 
ous flaws,  or  rather  with  one  many-branched  flaw  and  crack,  run- 
ning through  the  texture  of  it.  For  example,  did  he  not  treat 
Gilbert  de  Cereville  in  the  most  shocking  manner  1  He  cast  Gil- 
bert into  prison ;  and,  with  chains  and  slow  torments,  wore  the 
life  out  of  him  there.  And  Gilbert's  crime  was  understood  to  be 
only  that  of  innocent  Joseph  :  the  Lady  Essex  was  a  Potiphar's 
Wife,  and  had  accused  poor  Gilbert !  Other  cracks,  and  branches 
of  that  widespread  flaw  in  the  Standard-bearer's  soul  we  could 
point  out ;  but  indeed  the  main  stem  and  trunk  of  all  is  too  visible 
in  this,  That  he  had  no  right  reverence  for  the  Heavenly  in  Man, 
—  that  far  from  shewing  due  reverence  to  St.  Edmund,  he  did 
not  even  shew  him  common  justice.  While  others  in  the  Eastern 
Counties  were  adorning  and  enlarging  with  rich  gifts  St.  Ed- 
mund's resting  place,  which  had  become  a  city  of  refuge  for  many 
things,  this  Earl  of  Essex  flatly  defrauded  him,  by  violence  or 


HENRY    OF    ESSEX.  107 

quirk  of  law,  of  five  shillings  yearly,  and  converted  said  sum  to 
his  own  poor  uses  !  Nay,  in  another  case  of  litigation,  the  unjust 
Standard-bearer,  for  his  own  profit,  asserting  that  the  cause  be- 
longed not  to  St.  Edmund's  Court,  but  to  his  in  Lailand  Hundred, 
'  involved  us  in  travellings  and  innumerable  expenses,  vexing,4he 
'  servants  of  St.  Edmund  for  a  long  tract  of  time.'  In  short  he  is 
without  reverence  for  the  Heavenly,  this  Standard-bearer  ;  reveres 
only  the  Earthly,  Gold-coined  ;  and  has  a  most  morbid  lamentable 
flaw  in  the  texture  of  him.     It  cannot  come  to  good. 

Accordingly,  the  same  flaw,  or  St. -Vitus'  tic,  manifests  itself 
ere  long  in  another  way.  In  the  year  1157,  he  went  with  his 
Standard  to  attend  King  Henry,  our  blessed  Sovereign  (whom 
we  saw  afterwards  at  Waltham),  in  his  War  with  the  Welsh.  A 
somewhat  disastrous  War ;  in  which  while  King  Henry  and  his 
force  were  struggling  to  retreat  Parthian-like,  endless  clouds  of 
exasperated  Welshmen  hemming  them  in,  and  now  we  had  come 
to  the  '  difficult  pass  of  Coleshill,'  and  as  it  were  to  the  nick  of 
destruction,  —  Henry  Earl  of  Essex  shrieks  out  on  a  sudden 
(blinded  doubtless  by  his  inner  flaw,  or  '  evil  genius  '  as  some 
name  it),  That  King  Henry  is  killed,  That  all  is  lost, — and 
flings  down  his  Standard  to  shift  for  itself  there  !  And,  certainly 
enough,  all  had  been  lost,  had  all  men  been  as  he  ;  — had  not 
brave  men,  without  such  miserable  jerking  tic  douloureux  in  the 
souls  of  them,  come  dashing  up,  with  blazing  swords  and  looks, 
and  asserted  That  nothing  was  lost  yet,  that  all  must  be  regained 
yet.  In  this  manner  King  Henry  and  his  force  got  safely  retreat- 
ed, Parthian-like,  from  the  pass  of  Coleshill  and  the  Welsh  War,* 
But,  once  home  again,  Earl  Robert  de  Montfort,  a  kinsman  of 
this  Standard-bearer's,  rises  up  in  the  King's  Assembly  to  de- 
clare openly  that  such  a  man  is  unfit  for  bearing  English  Stand- 
ards, being  in  fact  either  a  special  traitor,  or  something  almost 
worse,  a  coward  namely,  or  universal  traitor.  Wager  of  Battle 
in  consequence  ;  solemn  Duel,  by  the  King's  appointment,  '  in  a 
'  certain  Island  of  the  Thames-stream  at  Reading,  apud  Radingas, 
1  short  way  from  the  Abbey  there.'  King,  Peers,  and  an  immense 
multitude  of  people,  on  such  scaffoldings  and  heights  as  they  can 

*  See  Lyttelton's  Henry  II.,  ii.  384. 


108  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

come  at,  are  gathered  round,  to  see  what  issue  the  business  will 
take.  The  business  takes  this  bad  issue,  in  our  Monk's  own 
words,  faithfully  rendered  : 

'  And  it  came  to  pass,  while  Robert  de  Montfort  thundered  on 
'  him  manfully  (virilitcr  intonasset)  with  hard  and  frequent  strokes, 
'  and  a  valiant  beginning  promised  the  fruit  of  victory,  Henry  of 
'  Essex,  rather  giving  way,  glanced  round  on  all  sides;  and  lo,  at 
'  the  rim  of  the  horizon,  on  the  confines  of  the  River  and  land,  he 
'  discerned  the  glorious  King  and  Martyr  Edmund,  in  shining 
'  armour,  and  as  if  hovering  in  the  air  ;  looking  towards  him  with 
'  severe  countenance,  nodding  his  head  with  a  mien  and  motion  of 
'  austere  anger.  At  St.  Edmund's  hand  there  stood  also  another 
'  Knight,  Gilbert  de  Cereville,  whose  armour  was  not  so  splendid, 
'  whose  stature  was  less  gigantic  ;  casting  vengeful  looks  at  him. 
'  This  he  seeing  with  his  eyes,  remembered  that  old  crime  brings 
'  new  shame.  And  now  wholly  desperate,  and  changing  reason 
1  into  violence,  he  took  the  part  of  one  blindly  attacking,  not  skil- 
'  fully  defending.  Who  while  he  struck  fiercely  was  more  fiercely 
'  struck  ;  and  so,  in  short,  fell  down  vanquished,  and  it  was 
'  thought,  slain.  As  he  lay  there  for  dead,  his  kinsmen,  Mag- 
1  nates  of  England,  besought  the  King,  that  the  Monks  of  Read- 
'  ing  might  have  leave  to  bury  him.  However,  he  proved  not  to 
1  be  dead,  but  got  well  again  among  them ;  and  now,  with  re- 
'  covered  health,  assuming  the  Regular  Habit,  he  strove  to  wipe 
'  out  the  stain  of  his  former  life,  to  cleanse  the  long  week  of  his 
'  dissolute  history  by  at  least  a  purifying  sabbath,  and  cultivate 
1  the  studies  of  Virtue  into  fruits  of  eternal  Felicity.'  * 

Thus  does  the  Conscience  of  man  project  itself  athwart  what- 
soever of  knowledge  or  surmise,  of  imagination,  understanding, 
faculty,  acquirement,  or  natural  disposition  he  has  in  him  :  and, 
like  light  through  coloured  glass,  paint  strange  pictures  ■  on  the 
rim  of  the  horizon  '  and  elsewhere  !  Truly,  this  same  '  sense  of 
the  Infinite  nature  of  Duty  '  is  the  central  part  of  all  with  us  ;  a 
ray  as  of  Eternity  and  Immortality,  immured  in  dusky  many- 
coloured  Time,  and  its  deaths  and  births.    Your  '  coloured  glass  ' 

*  Jocelini  Chronici,  p.  52. 


HENRY    OF    ESSEX.  109 

varies  so  much  from  century  to  century  ;  —  and,  in  certain  money- 
making,  game-preserving  centuries,  it  gets  so  terribly  opaque  ! 
Not  a  Heaven  with  cherubim  surrounds  you  then,  but  a  kind  of 
vacant  leaden-coloured  Hell.  One  day  it  will  again  cease  to  be 
opaque,  this  '  coloured  glass.'  Nay,  may  it  not  become  at  once 
translucent  and  wncoloured?  Painting  no  Pictures  more  for  us, 
but  only  the  everlasting  Azure  itself?  That  will  be  a  right  glo- 
rious consummation  !  — 

Saint  Edmund  from  the  horizon's  edge,  in  shining  armour, 
threatening  the  misdoer  in  his  hour  of  extreme  need  :  it  is  beauti- 
ful, it  is  great  and  true.  So  old,  yet  so  modern,  actual ;  true  yet 
for  every  one  of  us,  as  for  Henry  the  Earl  and  Monk  !  A  glimpse 
as  of  the  Deepest  in  Man's  Destiny,  which  is  the  same  for  all 
times  and  ages.  Yes,  Henry  my  brother,  there  in  thy  extreme 
need,  thy  soul  is  lamed;  and  behold  thou  canst  not  so  much  as 
fight !  For  Justice  and  Reverence  are  the  everlasting  central  Law 
of  this  Universe  ;  and  to  forget  them,  and  have  all  the  Universe 
against  one,  God  and  one's  own  Self  for  enemies,  and  only  the 
Devil  and  the  Dragons  for  friends,  is  not  that  a  '  lameness '  like 
few?  That  some  shining  armed  St.  Edmund  hang  minatory  on 
thy  horizon,  that  infinite  sulphur-lakes  hang  minatory,  or  do  not 
now  hang,  —  this  alters  no  whit  the  eternal  fact  of  the  thing.  I 
say,  thy  soul  is  lamed,  and  the  God  and  all  Godlike  in  it  marred  : 
lamed,  paralytic,  tending  towards  baleful  eternal  death,  whether 
thou  know  it  or  not ;  — nay  hadst  thou  never  known  it,  that  surely 
had  been  worst  of  all !  — 

Thus,  at  any  rate,  by  the  heavenly  Awe  that  overshadows 
earthly  Business,  does  Samson,  readily  in  those  days,  save  St. 
Edmund's  Shrine,  and  innumerable  still  more  precious  things. 


10 


CHAPTER    XV. 


PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL. 


Here  indeed,  perhaps,  by  rule  of  antagonisms,  may  be  the  place 
to  mention  that,  after  King  Richard's  return,  there  was  a  liberty 
of  tourneying  given  to  the  fighting  men  of  England  :  that  a  Tour- 
nament was  proclaimed  in  the  Abbot's  domain,  '  between  Thet- 
ford  and  St.  Edmundsbury,'  —  perhaps  in  the  Euston  region,  on 
Fakenham  Heights,  midway  between  these  two  localities :  that  it 
was  publicly  prohibited  by-  our  Lord  Abbot ;  and  nevertheless 
was  held  in  spite  of  him,  —  and  by  the  parties,  as  would  seem, 
considered  '  a  gentle  and  free  passage  of  arms.' 

Nay,  next  year,  there  came  to  the  same  spot  four-and-twenty 
young  men,  sons  of  Nobles,  for  another  passage  of  arms  ;  who, 
having  completed  the  same,  all  rode  into  St.  Edmundsbury  to 
lodge  for  the  night.  Here  is  modesty  !  Our  Lord  Abbot  being 
instructed  of  it,  ordered  the  Gates  to  be  closed  ;  the  whole  party 
shut  in.  The  morrow  was  the  Vigil  of  the  Apostles  Peter  and 
Paul ;  no  outgate  on  the  morrow.  Giving  their  promise  not  to 
depart  without  permission,  those  four-and-twenty  young  bloods 
dieted  all  that  day  (manducaverunt)  with  the  Lord  Abbot,  waiting 
for  trial  on  the  morrow.  'But  after  dinner,' — mark  it,  pos- 
terity !  —  '  the  Lord  Abbot  retiring  into  his  Thalamus,  they  all 
'  started  up,  and  began  carolling  and  singing  (carolare  etcantare); 
1  sending  into  the  Town  for  wine  ;  drinking,  and  afterwards  howl- 
1  ing  (ulul antes) ;  —  totally  depriving  the  Abbot  and  Convent  of 
'  their  afternoon's  nap  ;  doing  all  this  in  derision  of  the  Lord  Ab- 
*  bot,  and  spending  in  such  fashion  the  whole  day  till  evening, 
'  nor  would  they  desist  at  the  Lord  Abbot's  order  !  Night  coming 
'  on,  they  broke  the  bolts  of  the  Town-Gates,  and  went  off  by 


PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL.  Ill 

'  violence !  '  *  Was  the  like  ever  heard  of?  The  roysterous 
young  dogs ;  carolling,  howling,  breaking  the  Lord  Abbot's 
sleep  ;  —  after  that  sinful  chivalry  cock-fight  of  theirs  !  They 
too  are  a  feature  of  distant  centuries,  as  of  near  ones.  St.  Ed- 
mund on  the  edge  of  your  horizon,  or  whatever  else  there,  young 
scamps,  in  the  dandy  state,  whether  cased  in  iron  or  in  whale- 
bone, begin  to  caper  and  carol  on  the  green  Earth  !  Our  Lord 
Abbot  excommunicated  most  of  them ;  and  they  gradually  came 
in  for  repentance. 

Excommunication  is  a  great  recipe  with  our  Lord  Abbot ;  the 
prevailing  purifier  in  those  ages.  Thus  when  the  Townsfolk  and 
Monks-menials  quarrelled  once  at  the  Christmas  Mysteries  in  St. 
Edmund's  Churchyard,  and  'from  words  it  came  to  cuffs,  and 
from  cuffs  to  cuttings  and  the  effusion  of  blood,'  —  our  Lord  Abbot 
excommunicates  sixty  of  the  rioters,  with  bell,  book  and  candle 
(accensis  candelis),  at  one  stroke.*  Whereupon  they  all  come 
suppliant,  indeed  nearly  naked,  '  nothing  on  but  their  breeches, 
'  omnino  nudi  prater  femoralia,  and  prostrate  themselves  at  the 
'  Church-door.'     Figure  that ! 

In  fact,  by  excommunication  or  persuasion,  by  impetuosity  of 
driving  or  adroitness  in  leading,  this  Abbot,  it  is  now  becoming 
plain  everywhere,  is  a  man  that  generally  remains  master  at  last. 
He  tempers  his  medicine  to  the  malady,  now  hot,  now  cool ;  pru- 
dent though  fiery,  an  eminently  practical  man.  Nay  sometimes 
in  his  adroit  practice  there  are  swift  turns  almost  of  a  surprising 
nature !  Once,  for  example,  it  chanced  that  Geoffrey  Riddell 
Bishop  of  Ely,  a  Prelate  rather  troublesome  to  our  Abbot,  made 
a  request  of  him  for  timber  from  his  woods  towards  certain  edifices 
going  on  at  Glemsford.  The  Abbot,  a  great  builder  himself,  dis- 
liked the  request ;  could  not  however  give  it  a  negative.  While 
he  lay,  therefore,  at  his  Manorhouse  of  Melford  not  long  after, 
there  comes  to  him  one  of  the  Lord  Bishop's  men  or  monks,  with 
a  message  from  his  Lordship,  "  That  he  now  begged  permission 
to  cut  down  the  requisite  trees  in  Elmswell  Wood,"  —  so  said 
the  monk  :  Elmsw;e//,  where  there  are  no  trees  but  scrubs  and 
shrubs,  instead  oiYAmset,  our  true  nemus,  and  high-towering  oak- 

*  Jocelini  Chronica,  p.  40.  t  Ibid.  p.  63. 


112  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

wood,  here  on  Melford  Manor !  Elms  well  ?  The  Lord  Abbot, 
in  surprise,  inquires  privily  of  Richard  his  Forester  ;  Richard  an- 
swers that  my  Lord  of  Ely  has  already  had  his  carpentarii  in 
Elmse^,  and  marked  out  for  his  own  use  all  the  best  trees  in  the 
compass  of  it.  Abbot  Samson  thereupon  answers  the  monk : 
"Elmswell?  Yes  surely,  be  it  as  my  Lord  Bishop  wishes." 
The  successful  monk,  on  the  morrow  morning,  hastens  home  to 
Ely;  but,  on  the  morrow  morning,  '  directly  after  mass,'  Abbot 
Samson  too  was  busy  !  The  successful  monk,  arriving  at  Ely,  is 
rated  for  a  goose  and  an  owl ;  is  ordered  back  to  say  that  Elmset 
was  the  place  meant.  Alas,  on  arriving  at  Elmset,  he  finds  the 
Bishop's  trees,  they  '  and  a  hundred  more,'  all  felled  and  piled, 
and  the  stamp  of  St.  Edmund's  Monastery  burnt  into  them,  —  for 
roofing  of  the  great  tower  we  are  building  there  !  Your  impor- 
tunate Bishop  must  seek  wood  for  Glemsford  edifices  in  some 
other  nanus  than  this.     A  practical  Abbot ! 

We  said  withal  there  was  a  terrible  flash  of  anger  in  him  :  wit- 
ness his  address  to  old  Herbert  the  Dean,  who  in  a  too  thrifty 
manner  has  erected  a  wind-mill  for  himself  on  his  glebe-lands  at 
Haberdon.  On  the  morrow,  after  mass,  our  Lord  Abbot  orders 
the  Cellerarius  to  send  off  his  carpenters  to  demolish  the  said 
structure  brevi  manu,  and  lay  up  the  wood  in  safe  keeping.  Old 
Dean  Herbert,  hearing  what  was  toward,  comes  tottering  along 
hither,  to  plead  humbly  for  himself  and  his  mill.  The  Abbot 
answers  :  "lam  obliged  to  thee  as  if  thou  hadst  cut  off  both  my 
feet !  By  God's  face,  per  os  Dei,  I  will  not  eat  bread  till  that 
fabric  be  torn  in  pieces.  Thou  art  an  old  man,  and  shouldst  have 
known  that  neither  the  King  nor  his  Justiciary  dare  change  aught 
within  the  Liberties,  without  consent  of  Abbot  and  Convent ;  and 
thou  hast  presumed  on  such  a  thing  1  I  tell  thee,  it  will  not  be 
without  damage  to  my  mills  ;  for  the  Townsfolk  will  go  to  thy 
mill,  and  grind  their  corn  (bladum  suum)  at  their  own  good  pleas- 
ure ;  nor  can  I  hinder  them,  since  they  are  free  men.  I  will 
allow  no  new  mills  on  such  principle.  Away,  away  ;  before  thou 
gettest  home  again,  thou  wilt  see  what  thy  mill  has  grown 
to  !  "* — The  very  reverend,  the  old  Dean  totters  home  again, 

*  Joceliui  Chronica,  p.  43. 


PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL.  113 

in  all  haste  ;  tears  the  mill  in  pieces  by  his  own  carpentarii,  to 
save  at  least  the  timber  ;  and  Abbot  Samson's  workmen,  coming 
up,  find  the  ground  already  clear  of  it. 

Easy  to  bully  down  poor  old  rural  Deans,  and  blow  their  wind- 
mills away  :  but  who  is  the  man  that  dare  abide  King  Richard's 
anger  ;  cross  the  Lion  in  his  path,  and  take  him  by  the  whiskers  ! 
Abbot  Samson  too;  he  is  that  man,  with  justice  on  his  side. 
The  case  was  this.  Adam  de  Cokefield,  one  of  the  chief  feuda- 
tories of  St.  Edmund,  and  a  principal  man  in  the  Eastern  Coun- 
ties, died,  leaving  large  possessions,  and  for  heiress  a  daughter 
of  three  months  ;  who  by  clear  law,  as  all  men  know,  became 
thus  Abbot  Samson's  ward  ;  whom  accordingly  he  proceeded  to 
dispose  of  to  such  person  as  seemed  fittest.  But  now  King  Rich- 
ard has  another  person  in  view,  to  whom  the  little  ward  and  her 
great  possessions  were  a  suitable  thing.  He,  by  letter,  requests 
that  Abbot  Samson  will  have  the  goodness  to  give  her  to  this 
person.  Abbot  Samson,  with  deep  humility,  replies  that  she  is 
already  given.  New  letters  from  Richard,  of  severer  tenor  ;  an- 
swered with  new  deep  humilities,  with  gifts  and  entreaties,  with 
no  promise  of  obedience.  Kind  Richard's  ire  is  kindled  ;  mes- 
sengers arrive  at  St.  Edmundsbury,  with  emphatic  message  to 
obey  or  tremble  !  Abbot  Samson,  wisely  silent  as  to  the  King's 
threats,  makes  answer  :  "  The  King  can  send  if  he  will,  and 
seize  the  ward  :  force  and  power  he  has  to  do  his  pleasure,  and 
abolish  the  whole  Abbey.  I  never  can  be  bent  to  wish  this  that 
he  seeks,  nor  shall  it  by  me  be  ever  done.  For  there  is  danger 
lest  such  things  be  made  a  precedent  of,  to  the  prejudice  of  my 
successors.  Videat  Altissirnus,  Let  the  Most  High  look  on  it. 
Whatsoever  thing  shall  befall* I  will  patiently  endure." 

Such  was  Abbot  Samson's  deliberate  decision.  Why  not? 
Cceur-de-Lion  is  very  dreadful,  but  not  the  dreadfulest.  Videat 
Altissirnus.  I  reverence  Cceur-de-Lion  to  the  marrow  of  my 
bones,  and  will  in  all  right  things  be  homo  suus;  but  it  is  not, 
properly  speaking,  with  terror,  with  any  fear  at  all.  On  the 
whole,  have  I  not  looked  on  the  face  of  '  Satan  with  outspread 
wings  ; '  steadily  into  Hellfire  these  seven-and-forty  years  ;  — 
10* 


114  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

and  was  not  melted  into  terror  even  at  that,  such  the  Lord's  good- 
ness to  me  ?     Cceur-de-Lion  ! 

Richard  swore  tornado  oaths,  worse  than  our  armies  in  Flan- 
ders, To  be  revenged  on  that  proud  Priest.  But  in  the  end  he 
discovered  that  the  Priest  was  right ;  and  forgave  him,  and  even 
loved  him.  'King  Richard  wrote,  soon  after,  to  Abbot  Samson, 
'  That  he  wanted  one  or  two  of  the  St.  Edmundsbury  dogs, 
'  which  he  heard  were  good.'  Abbot  Samson  sent  him  dogs  of 
the  best ;  Richard  replied  by  the  present  of  a  ring,  which  Pope 
Innocent  the  Third  had  given  him.  Thou  brave  Richard,  thou 
brave  Samson  !  Richard  too,  I  suppose,  '  loved  a  man,'  and  knew 
one  when  he  saw  him. 

No  one  will  accuse  our  Lord  Abbot  of  wanting  worldly  wis- 
dom, due  interest  in  worldly  things.  A  skilful  man  ;  full  of  cun- 
ning insight,  lively  interests  ;  always  discerning  the  road  to  his 
object,  be  it  circuit,  be  it  short-cut,  and  victoriously  travelling  for- 
ward thereon.  Nay  rather  it  might  seem,  from  Jocelin's  Narra- 
tive, as  if  he  had  his  eye  all  but  exclusively  directed  on  terrestrial 
matters,  and  was  much  too  secular  for  a  devout  man.  But  this 
too,  if  we  examine  it,  was  right.  For  it  is  in  the  world  that  a 
man,  devout  or  other,  has  his  life  to  lead,  his  work  waiting  to  be 
done.  The  basis  of  Abbot  Samson's,  we  shall  discover,  was  truly 
religion,  after  all.  Returning  from  his  dusty  pilgrimage,  with 
such  welcome  as  we  saw,  '  he  sat  down  at  the  foot  of  St.  Ed- 
mund's Shrine.'  Not  a  talking  theory  that ;  no,  a  silent  practice  : 
Thou  St.  Edmund  with  what  lies  in  thee,  thou  now  must  help 
me,  or  none  will  ! 

This  also  is  a  significant  fact :  the  zealous  interest  our  Abbot 
took  in  the  Crusades.  To  all  noble  Christian  hearts  of  that  era, 
what  earthly  enterprise  so  noble?  'When  Henry  II.,  having 
'  taken  the  cross,  came  to  St.  Edmund's,  to  pay  his  devotions  be- 
'  fore  setting  out,  the  Abbot  secretly  made  for  himself  a  cross  of 
'  linen  cloth  :  and,  holding  this  in  one  hand  and  a  threaded  needle 
1  in  the  other,  asked  leave  of  the  King  to  assume  it !  '  The  King 
could  not  spare  Samson  out  of  England  ;  —  the  King  himself  in- 
deed never  went.  But  the  Abbot's  eye  was  set  on  the  Holy 
Sepulchre,  as  on  the  spot  of  this  Earth  where  the  true  cause  of 


PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL.  115 

Heaven  was  deciding  itself.  '  At  the  retaking  of  Jerusalem  by 
4  the  Pagans,  Abbot  Samson  put  on  a  cilice  and  hair-shirt,  and 
'  wore  under-garments  of  hair-cloth  ever  after  ;  he  abstained  also 
'  from  flesh  and  flesh-meats  (came  et  camels)  thenceforth  to  the 
'  end  of  his  life.'  Like  a  dark  cloud  eclipsing  the  hopes  of 
Christendom,  those  tidings  cast  their  shadow  over  St.  Edmunds- 
bury  too  :  Shall  Samson  Abbas  take  pleasure  while  Christ's 
Tomb  is  in  the  hands  t)f  the  Infidel1?  Samson,  in  pain  of  body, 
shall  daily  be  reminded  of  it,  admonished  to  grieve  for  it. 

The  great  antique  heart :  how  like  a  child's  in  its  simplicity, 
like  a  man's  in  its  earnest  solemnity  and  depth  !  Heaven  lies  over 
him  wheresoever  he  goes  or  stands  on  the  Earth  ;  making  all  the 
Earth  a  mystic  Temple  to  him,  the  Earth's  business  all  a  kind  of 
worship.  Glimpses  of  bright  creatures  flash  in  the  common  sun- 
light ;  angels  yet  hover  doing  God's  messages  among  men  :  that 
rainbow  was  set  in  the  clouds  by  the  hand  of  God  !  Wonder, 
miracle  encompass  the  man  ;  he  lives  in  an  element  of  miracle  ; 
Heaven's  splendour  over  his  head,  Hell's  darkness  under  his  feet. 
A  great  Law  of  Duty,  high  as  these  two  Infinitudes,  dwarfing  all 
else,  annihilating  all  else, — making  royal  Richard  as  small  as 
peasant  Samson,  smaller  if  need  be  !  — The  '  imaginative  facul- 
ties I '  '  Rude  poetic  ages  ? '  The  '  primeval  poetic  element  1 ' 
O  for  God's  sake,  good  reader,  talk  no  more  of  all  that !  It  was 
not  a  Dilettantism  this  of  Abbot  Samson.  It  was  a  Reality,  and 
it  is  one.  The  garment  only  of  it  is  dead  ;  the  essence  of  it  lives 
through  all  Time  and  all  Eternity  !  — 

And  truly,  as  we  said  above,  is  not  this  comparative  silence  of 
Abbot  Samson  as  to  his  religion,  precisely  the  healthiest  sign  of 
him  and  of  it1?  5  The  Unconscious  is  the  alone  Complete.'  Abbot 
Samson  all  along  a  busy  working  man,  as  all  men  are  bound  to 
be,  his  religion,  his  worship  was  like  his  daily  bread  to  him  ;  — 
which  he  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  talk  much  about ;  which  he 
merely  ate  at  stated  intervals,  and  lived  and  did  his  work  upon  ! 
This  is  Abbot  Samson's  Catholicism  of  the  Twelfth  Century  ; 
—  something  like  the  Ism  of  all  true  men  in  all  true  centuries,  I 
fancy !  Alas,  compared  with  any  of  the  Isms  current  in  these 
poor  days,  what  a  thing  !      Compared  with  the  respectablest, 


116  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

morbid,  struggling  Methodism,  never  so  earnest ;  with  the  re- 
spectablest,  ghastly,  dead  or  galvanised  Dilettantism,  never  so 
spasmodic  ! 

Methodism  with  its  eye  forever  turned  on  its  own  navel ;  asking 
itself  with  torturing  anxiety  of  Hope  and  Fear,  "Ami  right, 
am  J  wrong  ?  Shall  I  be  saved,  shall  I  not  be  damned  ?  "  — what 
is  this,  at  bottom,  but  a  new  phasis  of  Egoism,  stretched  out  into 
the  Infinite  ;  not  always  the  heavenlier  for  its  infinitude  !  Brother, 
so  soon  as  possible,  endeavour  to  rise  above  all  that.  "  Thou  art 
wrong  ;  thou  art  like  to  be  damned  :"  consider  that  as  the  fact, 
reconcile  thyself  even  to  that,  if  thou  be  a  man  ; — then  first  is 
the  devouring  Universe  subdued  under  thee,  and  from  the  black 
murk  of  midnight  and  noise  of  greedy  Acheron,  dawn  as  of  an 
everlasting  morning,  how  far  above  all  Hope  and  all  Fear,  springs 
for  thee,  enlightening  thy  steep  path,  awakening  in  thy  heart  celes- 
tial Memnon's  music ! 

But  of  our  Dilettantisms,  and  galvanised  Dilettantisms  ;  of 
Puseyism  —  0  Heavens,  what  shall  we  say  of  Paseyism,  in  com- 
parison to  Twelfth-Century  Catholicism  ?  Little  or  nothing  ;  for 
indeed  it  is  a  matter  to  strike  one  dumb. 

The  Builder  of  this  Universe  was  wise, 

He  plann'd  all  souls,  all  systems,  planets,  particles  : 

The  Plan  He  shap'd  His  Worlds  aud  iEons  by 

Was Heavens  !  —  Was  thy  small  Nine-and-thirty  Articles  ? 

That  certain  human  souls,  living  on  this  practical  Earth,  should 
think  to  save  themselves  and  a  ruined  world  by  noisy  theoretic 
demonstrations  and  laudations  of  the  Church,  instead  of  some  un- 
nois)'",  unconscious,  but  practical,  total,  heart-and-soul  demonstra- 
tion of  a  Church  :  this,  in  the  circle  of  revolving  ages,  this  also 
was  a  thing  we  were  to  see.  A  kind  of  penultimate  thing,  pre- 
cursor of  very  strange  consummations ;  last  thing  but  one  1  If 
there  is  no  atmosphere,  what  will  it  serve  a  man  to  demonstrate 
the  excellence  of  lungs  1  How  much  profitabler  when  you  can, 
like  Abbot  Samson,  breathe  ;  and  go  along  your  way  ! 


CHAPTER    XVI. 


ST.    EDMUND. 


Abbot  Samson  built  many  useful,  many  pious  edifices  ;  human 
dwellings,  churches,  church-steeples,  barns  ;  —  alj.  fallen  now  and 
vanished,  but  useful  while  they  stood.  He  built  and  endowed 
1  the  Hospital  of  Babwell ;  '  built  '  fit  houses  for  the  St.  Ed- 
mundsbury  Schools.'  Many  are  the  roofs  once  'thatched  with 
reeds  '  which  he  '  caused  to  be  covered  with  tiles  ;  '  or  if  they 
were  churches,  probably  '  with  lead.'  For  all  ruinous  incomplete 
things,  buildings  or  other,  were  an  eye-sorrow  to  the  man.  We 
saw  his  '  great  tower  of  St.  Edmund's  ;  '  or  at  least  the  roof- 
timbers  of  it,  lying  cut  and  stamped  in  Elmset  Wood.  To  change 
combustible  decaying  reed-thatch  into  tile  or  lead,  and  material, 
still  more,  moral  wreck  into  rain-tight  order,  what  a  comfort  to 
Samson  ! 

One  of  the  things  he  could  not  in  any  wise  but  rebuild  was  the 
great  Altar,  aloft  on  which  stood  the  Shrine  itself;  the  great 
Altar,  which  had  been  damaged  by  fire,  by  the  careless  rubbish 
and  careless  candle  of  two  somnolent  Monks,  one  night,  —  the 
Shrine  escaping  almost  as  if  by  miracle !  Abbot  Samson  read 
his  Monks  a  severe  lecture  :  "A  Dream  one  of  us  had,  that  he 
saw  St.  Edmund  naked  and  in  lamentable  plight.  Know  ye  the 
interpretation  of  that  Dream  1  St.  Edmund  proclaims  himself 
naked,  because  ye  defraud  the  naked  Poor  of  your  old  clothes, 
and  give  with  reluctance  what  ye  are  bound  to  give  them  of  meat 
and  drink  :  the  idleness  moreover  and  negligence  of  the  Sacristan, 
and  his  people  is  too  evident  from  the  late  misfortune  by  fire. 
Well  might  our  Holy  Martyr  seem  to  lie  cast  out  from  his  Shrine, 
and  say  with  groans  that  he  was  stript  of  his  garments,  and 
wasted  with  hunger  and  thirst !  " 


118  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

This  is  Abbot  Samson's  interpretation  of  the  Dream ;  —  dia- 
metrically the  reverse  of  that  given  by  the  Monks  themselves, 
who  scruple  not  to  say  privily,  "It  is  we  that  are  the  naked  and 
famished  limbs  of  the  Martyr  ;  we  whom  the  Abbot  curtails  of  all 
our  privileges,  setting  his  own  official  to  control  our  very  Cel- 
larer!" Abbot  Samson  adds,  that  this  judgment  by  fire  has 
fallen  upon  them  for  murmuring  about  their  meat  and  drink. 

Clearly  enough,  meanwhile,  the  Altar,  whatever  the  burning  of 
it  mean  or  foreshadow,  must  needs  be  reedified.  Abbot  Samson 
reedifies  it,  all  of  polished  marble  ;  with  the  highest  stretch  of  art 
and  sumptuosity,  reembellishes  the  Shrine  for  which  it  is  to  serve 
as  pediment.  Nay  farther,  as  had  ever  been  among  his  prayers, 
he  enjoys,  he  sinner,  a  glimpse  of  the  glorious  Martyr's  very 
Body  in  the  process ;  having  solemnly  opened  the  Loculus,  Chest 
or  sacred  Coffin,  for  that  purpose.  It  is  the  culminating  moment 
of  Abbot  Samson's  life  Bozzy  Jocelin  himself  rises  into  a  kind 
of  Psalmist  solemnity  on  this  occasion  ;  the  laziest  monk  '  weeps  ' 
warm  tears,  as  Te  Deum  is  sung. 

•  Very  strange  ;  —  how  far  vanished  from  us  in  these  unworship- 
ping  ages  of  ours  !  The  Patriot  Hampden,  best  beatified  man  we 
have,  had  lain  in  like  manner  some  two  centuries  in  his  narrow 
home,  when  certain  dignitaries  of  us,  '  and  twelve  grave-diggers 
with  pulleys,'  raised  him  also  up,  under  cloud  of  night;  cut  off 
his  arm  with  penknives,  pulled  the  scalp  off  his  head,  —  and  other- 
wise worshipped  our  Hero  Saint  in  the  most  amazing  manner  !  * 
Let  the  modern  eye  look  earnestly  on  that  old  midnight  hour  in 
St.  Edmundsbury  Church,  shining  yet  on  us,  ruddy-bright, 
through  the  depths  of  seven  hundred  years  ;  and  consider  mourn- 
fully what  our  Hero-worship  once  was,  and  what  it  now  is !  We 
translate  with  all  the  fidelity  we  can  : 

'  The  Festival  of  St.  Edmund  now  approaching,  the  marble 
'  blocks  are  polished,  and  all  things  are  in  readiness  for  lifting  of 
'  the  Shrine  to  its  new  place.  A  fast  of  three  days  was  held  by 
'  all  the  people,  the  cause  and  meaning  thereof  being  publicly  set 
'  forth  to  them.  The  Abbot  announces  to  the  Convent  that  all 
'  must  prepare  themselves  for  transferring  of  the  Shrine,  and  ap- 

*  Annual  Register  (year  1828,  Chronicle,  p.  93),  Gentleman's  Magazine, 
&c.  &c. 


ST.    EDMUND.  119 

'  points  time  and  way  for  the  work.  Coming  therefore  that  night 
'  to  matins,  we  found  the  great  Shrine  {feretrum  magnum)  raised 
'  upon  the  Altar,  but  empty  ;  covered  all  over  with  white  doeskin 
'  leather,  fixed  to  the  wood  with  silver  nails  ;  bat  one  pannel  of 
'  the  Shrine  was  left  down  below,  and  resting  thereon,  beside  it3 
'  old  column  of  the  Church,  the  Loculus  with  the  Sacred  Body 
'  yet  lay  where  it  was  wont.  Praises  being  sung,  we  all  proceed- 
1  ed  to  commence  our  disciplines  {ad  disciplinas  suscipiendas) . 
'  These  finished,  the  Abbot  and  certain  with  him  are  clothed  in 
'  their  albs ;  and,  approaching  reverently,  set  about  uncovering 
'  the  Loculus.  There  was  an  outer  cloth  of  linen,  enwrapping 
'  the  Loculus  and  all ;  this  we  found  tied  on  the  upper  side  with 
'  strings  of  its  own  :  within  this  was  a  cloth  of  silk,  and  then 
'  another  linen  cloth,  and  then  a  third  ;  and  so  at  last  the  Loculus 
'  was  uncovered,  and  seen  resting  on  a  little  tray  of  wood,  that  the 
'  bottom  of  it  might  not  be  injured  by  the  stone.  Over  the  breast 
'  of  the  Martyr,  there  lay,  fixed  to  the  surface  of  the  Loculus,  a 
'  Golden  Angel  about  the  length  of  a  human  foot ;  holding  in  one 
'  hand  a  golden  sword,  and  in  the  other  a  banner :  under  this  there 
'  was  a  hole  in  the  lid  of  the  Loculus,  on  which  the  ancient  ser- 
'  vants  of  the  Martyr  had  been  wont  to  lay  their  hands  for  touch- 
1  ing  the  Sacred  Body.  And  over  the  figure  of  the  Angel  was 
'  this  verse  inscribed  : 

'  Martiris  ecce  zoma  servat  Mlchaelis  agahna* 

1  At  the  head  and  foot  of  the  Loculus  were  iron  rings  whereby  it 
'  could  be  lifted.' 

'  Lifting  the  Loculus  and  Body,  therefore,  they  carried  it  to  the 
'  Altar ;  and  I  put-to  my  sinful  hand  to  help  in  carrying,  though 
'  the  Abbot  had  commanded  that  none  should  approach  except 
'  called.  And  the  Loculus  was  placed  in  the  Shrine ;  and  the 
'  pannel  it  had  stood  on  was  put  in  its  place,  and  the  Shrine  for 
'  the  present  closed.  We  all  thought  that  the  Abbot  would  shew 
'  the  Loculus  to  the  people  ;  and  bring  out  the  Sacred  Body 
'  again,  at  a  certain  period  of  the  Festival.  But  in  this  we  were 
1  wofully  mistaken,  as  the  sequel  shews. 

*  This  is  the  Martyr's  Garment,  which  Michael's  Image  guards. 


120  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

'  For  in  the  fourth  holiday  of  the  Festival,  while  the  Convent 
'  were  all  singing  Completorium,  our  Lord  Abbot  spoke  privily  with 
'  the  Sacristan  and  Walter  the  Medicus ;  and  order  was  taken 
'  that  twelve  of  the  Brethren  should  be  appointed  against  mid- 
'  night,  who  were  strong  for  carrying  the  pannel-planks  of  the 
'  Shrine,  and  skilful  in  unfixing  them,  and  putting  them  together 
'  again.  The  Abbot  then  said  that  it  was  among  his  prayers  to 
'  look  once  upon  the  Body  of  his  Patron ;  and  that  he  wished  the 
'  Sacristan  and  Walter  the  Medicus  to  be  with  him.  The  Twelve 
'  appointed  Brethren  were  these  :  The  Abbot's  two  Chaplains, 
'  the  two  Keepers  of  the  Shrine,  the  two  Masters  of  the  Vestry ; 
'  and  six  more,  namely,  the  Sacristan  Hugo,  Walter  the  Medicus, 
'  Augustin,  William  of  Dice,  Robert,  and  Richard.  I,  alas,  was 
1  not  of  the  number. 

'  The  Convent  therefore  being  all  asleep,  these  Twelve,  clothed 
'  in  their  albs,  with  the  Abbot,  assembled  at  the  Altar  ;  and  open- 
'  ing  a  pannel  of  the  Shrine,  they  took  out.  the  Loculus ;  laid  it 
'  on  a  table,  near  where  the  Shrine  used  to  be  ;  and  made  ready 
'  for  unfastening  the  lid,  which  was  joined  and  fixed  to  the  Locu- 
'  lus  with  sixteen  very  long  nails.  Which  when,  with  difficulty, 
'  they  had  done,  all  except  the  two  forenamed  associates  are  or- 
'  dered  to  draw  back.  The  Abbot  and  they  two  were  alone  pri- 
'  vileged  to  look  in.  The  Loculus  was  so  filled  with  the  Sacred 
'  Body  that  you  could  scarcely  put  a  needle  between  the  head  and 
'  the  wood,  or  between  the  feet  and  the  wood  :  the  head  lay  united 
1  to  the  body,  a  little  raised  with  a  small  pillow.  But  the  Abbot, 
•  looking  close,  found  now  a  silk  cloth  veiling  the  whole  Body, 
'  and  then  a  linen  cloth  of  wondrous  whiteness ;  and  upon  the 
'  head  was  spread  a  small  linen  cloth,  and  then  another  small  and 
'  most  fine  silk  cloth,  as  if  it  were  the  veil  of  a  nun.  These  cov- 
1  erings  being  lifted  off,  they  found  now  the  Sacred  Body  all  wrapt 
'  in  linen  ;  and  so  at  length  the  lineaments  of  the  same  appeared. 
'  But  here  the  Abbot  stopped  ;  saying  he  durst  not  proceed  far- 
'  ther,  or  look  at  the  sacred  flesh  naked.  Taking  the  head  between 
'  his  hands,  he  thus  spake  groaning  :  "  Glorious  Martyr,  holy 
'  Edmund,  blessed  be  the  hour  when  thou  wert  born.  Glorious 
'  Martyr,  turn  it  not  to  my  perdition  that  I  have  so  dared  to  touch 
'  thee,  I  miserable  and  sinful ;  thou  knowest  my  devout  love,  and 


ST.    EDMUND.  121 

1  the  intention  of  my  mind."     And  proceeding,  he  touched  the 

*  eyes ;  and  the  nose,  which  was  very  massive  and  prominent 
'  (valde  grossum  et  valde  eminentem) ;  and  then  he  touched  the 
'  breast  and  arms  ;  and  raising  the  left  arm  he  touched  the  fingers, 
'  and  placed  his  own  ringers  between  the  sacred  fingers.  And 
'  proceeding  he  found  the  feet  standing  stiff  up,  like  the  feet  of  a 
'  man  dead  yesterday  ;  and  he  touched  the  toes,  and  counted 
'  them  {tangendo  numeravit). 

1  And  now  it  was  agreed  that  the  other  Brethren  should  be 

•  called  forward  to  see  the  miracles  ;  and  accordingly  those  ten 
'  now  advanced,  and  along  with  them  six  others  who  had  stolen 
'  in  without  the  Abbot's  assent,  namely,  Walter  of  St.  Alban's, 
1  Hugh  the  Infirmirarius,  Gilbert  brother  of  the  Prior,  Richard  of 
'  Henham,  Jocellus  our  Cellarer,  and  Turstan  the  Little  ;  and  all 
'  these  saw  the  Sacred  Body,  but  Turstan  alone  of  them  put  forth 
'  his  hand,  and  touched  the  Saint's  knees  and  feet.  And  that 
'  there  might  be  abundance  of  witnesses,  one  of  our  Brethren, 
'  John  of  Dice,  sitting  on  the  roof  of  the  Church,  with  the  ser- 
'  vants  of  the  Vestry,  and  looking  through,  clearly  saw  all  these 
'  things.' 

What  a  scene  ;  shining  luminous  effulgent,  as  the  lamps  of  St. 
Edmund  do,  through  the  dark  Night ;  John  of  Dice,  with  vestry- 
men, clambering  on  the  roof  to  look  through  ;  the  Convent  all 
asleep,  and  the  Earth  all  asleep,  —  and  since  then,  Seven  Centu- 
ries of  Time  mostly  gone  to  sleep  !  Yes,  there,  sure  enough,  is 
the  martyred  Body  of  Edmund  landlord  of  the  Eastern  Counties, 
who,  nobly  doing  what  he  liked  with  his  own,  was  slain  three 
hundred  years  ago  :  and  a  noble  awe  surrounds  the  memory  of 
him,  symbol  and  promoter  of  many  other  right  noble  things. 

Have  not  we  now  advanced  to  strange  new  stages  of  Hero-wor- 
ship, now  in  the  little  Church  of  Hampden,  with  our  penknives 
out,  and  twelve  grave-diggers  with  pulleys?  The  manner  of 
men's  Hero-worship,  verily  it  is  the  innermost  fact  of  their  exist- 
ence, and  determines  all  the  rest,  —  at  public  hustings,  in  private 
drawing-rooms,  in  church,  in  market,  and  wherever  else.  Have 
true  reverence,  and  what  indeed  is  inseparable  therefrom,  rever- 
ence the  right  man,  all  is  well ;  have  sham-reverence,  and  what 
11 


1Q2  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

also  follows,  greet  with  it  the  wrong  man,  then  all  is  ill,  and  there 
is  nothing  well.  Alas,  if  Hero-worship  become  Dilettantism,  and 
all  except  Mammonism  be  a  vain  grimace,  how  much,  in  this  most 
earnest  Earth,  has  gone  and  is  evermore  going  to  fatal  destruction, 
and  lies  wasting  in  quiet  lazy  ruin,  no  man  regarding  it !  Till  at 
length  no  heavenly  Ism  any  longer  coming  down  upon  us,  Isms 
from  the  other  quarter  have  to  mount  up.  For  the  Earth,  I  say, 
is  an  earnest  place  ;  Life  is  no  grimace,  but  a  most  serious  fact. 
And  so,  under  universal  Dilettantism  much  having  been  stript  bare, 
not  the  souls  of  men  only,  but  their  very  bodies  and  bread-cup- 
boards having  been  stript  bare,  and  life  now  no  longer  possible, — 
all  is  reduced  to  desperation,  to  the  iron  law  of  Necessity  and  very 
Fact  again  ;  and  to  temper  Dilettantism,  and  astonish  it,  and  burn 
it  up  with  infernal  fire,  arises  Chartism,  Bare-bach-ism,  Sansculot- 
tism  so-called  !  May  the  gods,  and  what  of  unworshipped  heroes 
still  remain  among  us,  avert  the  omen.  — 

But  however  this  may  be,  St.  Edmund's  Loculus,  we  find,  has 
the  veils  of  silk  and  linen  reverently  replaced,  the  lid  fastened 
down  again  with  its  sixteen  ancient  nails  ;  is  wrapt  in  a  new  costly 
covering  of  silk,  the  gift  of  Hubert  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  : 
and  through  the  sky-window  John  of  Dice  sees  it  lifted  to  its  place 
in  the  Shrine,  the  pannels  of  this  latter  duly  refixed,  fit  parchment 
documents  being  introduced  withal  :  —  and  now  John  and  his  ves- 
trymen can  slide  down  from  the  roof,  for  all  is  over,  and  the  Con- 
vent wholly  awakens  to  matins.  '  When  we  assembled  to  sing 
'  matins,'  says  Jocelin,  '  and  understood  what  had  been  done, 
'  grief  took  hold  of  all  that  had  not  seen  these  things,  each  saying 
'to  himself,  "  Alas,  I  was  deceived."  Matins  over,  the  Abbot 
1  called  the  Convent  to  the  great  Altar  ;  and  briefly  recounting  the 
'  matter,  alleged  that  it  had  not  been  in  his  power,  nor  was  it  per- 
'  missible  or  fit,  to  invite  us  all  to  the  sight  of  such  things.  At 
'  hearing  of  which,  we  all  wept,  and  with  tears  sang  Te  Deum  lau- 
1  damns;  and  hastened  to  toll  the  bells  in  the  Choir.' 

Stupid  blockheads,  to  reverence  their  St.  Edmund's  dead  Body 
in  this  manner?  Yes,  brother ; — and  yet,  on  the  whole,  who 
knows  how  to  reverence  the  Body  of  a  Man  ?  It  is  the  most  reve- 
rend phenomenon  under  this  Sun.     For  the  Highest  God  dwells 


ST.    EDMUND.  123 

visible  in  that  mystic  unfathomable  Visibility,  which  calls  itself 
"  I"  on  the  Earth.  '  Bending  before  men,'  says  Novalis,  is  a 
'  reverence  done  to  this  Revelation  in  the  Flesh.  We  touch  Hea- 
'  ven  when  we  lay  our  hand  on  a  human  Body.'  And  the  Body 
of  one  Dead  ;  —  a  temple  where  the  Hero-soul  once  was  and  now 
is  not :  Oh,  all  mystery,  all  pity,  all  mute  awe  and  wonder  ;  Su- 
jsernaturaiism  brought  home  to  the  very  dullest ;  Eternity  laid 
open,  and  the  nether  Darkness  and  the  upper  Light-Kingdoms  ; 
—  do  conjoin  there,  or  exist  nowhere  !  Sauerteig  used  to  say  to 
me,  in  his  peculiar  way:  "A  Chancery  Lawsuit;  justice,  nay 
justice  in  mere  money,  denied  a  man,  for  all  his  pleading,  till 
twenty,  till  forty  years  of  his  Life  are  gone  seeking  it :  and  a 
Cockney  Funeral,  Death  reverenced  by  hatchments,  horsehair, 
brass-lacker,  and  unconcerned  bipeds  carrying  long  poles  and  bags 
of  black  silk: — are  not  these  two  reverences,  this  reverence 
for  Death  and  that  reverence  for  Life,  a  notable  pair  of  reverences 
among  you  English  1 " 

Abbot  Samson,  at  this  culminating  point  of  his  existence,  may, 
and  indeed  must,  be  left  to  vanish  with  his  Life-scenery  from  the 
eyes  of  modern  men.  He  had  to  run  into  France,  to  settle  with 
King  Richard  for  the  military  service  there  of  his  St.  Edmunds- 
bury  Knights  ;  and  with  great  labour  got  it  done.  He  had  to  de- 
cide on  the  dilapidated  Coventry  Monks  ;  and  with  great  labour, 
and  much  pleading  and  journeying,  got  them  reinstated  ;  dined 
with  them  all,  and  with  the  '  Masters  of  the  Schools  of  Oxne- 
ford,'  —  the  veritable  Oxford  Caput  sitting  there  at  dinner,  in  a 
dim  but  undeniable  manner,  in  the  City  of  Peeping  Tom  !  He 
had,  not  without  labour,  to  controvert  the  intrusive  Bishop  of 
Ely,  the  intrusive  Abbot  of  Cluny.  Magnanimous  Samson,  his 
life  is  but  a  labour  and  a  journey ;  a  bustling  and  a  justling,  till 
the  still  Night  come.  He  is  sent  for  again,  over  sea,  to  advise 
King  Richard  touching  certain  Peers  of  England,  who  had  taken 
the  Cross,  but  never  followed  it  to  Palestine,  whom  the  Pope  is 
inquiring  after.  The  magnanimous  Abbot  makes  preparation  for 
departure  ;  departs,  and And  Jocelin's  Boswellean  Narra- 
tive, suddenly  shorn  through  by  the  scissors  of  Destiny,  ends. 
There  are  no  words  more  ;  but  a  black  line,  and  leaves  of  blank 


124  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

paper.  Irremediable  :  the  miraculous  hand  that  held  all  this  the- 
atric-machinery suddenly  quits  hold  ;  impenetrable  Time-Curtains 
rush  down  :  in  the  mind's  eye  all  is  again  dark,  void  ;  with  loud 
dinning  in  the  mind's  ear,  our  real-phantasmagory  of  St.  Edmunds- 
bury  plunges  into  the  bosom  of  the  Twelfth  Century  again,  and 
all  is  over.  Monks,  Abbot,  Hero-worship,  Government,  Obedi- 
ence, Coeur-de-Lion  and  St.  Edmund's  Shrine,  vanish  like  Mirza's 
Vision  ;  and  there  is  nothing  left  but  a  mutilated  black  Ruin  amid 
green  botanic  expanses,  and  oxen,  sheep  and  dilettanti  pasturing 
in  their  places. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 


THE    BEGINNINGS. 


What  a  singular  shape  of  a  Man,  shape  of  a  Time,  have  we  in 
this  Abbot  Samson  and  his  history ;  how  strangely  do  modes, 
creeds,  formularies,  and  the  date  and  place  of  a  man's  birth,  mo- 
dify the  figure  of  the  man  ! 

Formulas  too,  as  we  call  them,  have  a  reality  in  Human  Life. 
They  are  real  as  the  very  skin  and  muscular  tissue  of  a  Man's 
Life  ;  and  a  most  blessed  indispensable  thing,  so  long  as  they  have 
vitality  withal,  and  are  a  living  skin  and  tissue  to  him  !  No  man, 
or  man's  life,  can  go  abroad  and  do  business  in  the  world  without 
skin  and  tissues.  No  ;  first  of  all,  these  have  to  fashion  them- 
selves, —  as  indeed  they  spontaneously  and  inevitably  do.  Foam 
itself,  and  this  is  worth  thinking  of,  can  harden  into  oyster-shell ; 
all  living  objects  do  by  necessity  form  to  themselves  a  skin. 

And  yet,  again,  when  a  man's  Formulas  become  dead ;  as  all 
Formulas,  in  the  progress  of  living  growth,  are  very  sure  to  do  ! 
When  the  poor  man's  integuments,  no  longer  nourished  from 
within,  become  dead  skin,  mere  adscititious  leather  and  callosity, 
wearing  thicker  and  thicker,  uglier  and  uglier  ;  till  no  heart  any 
longer  can  be  felt  beating  through  them,  so  thick,  callous,  calci- 
fied are  they  ;  and  all  over  it  has  now  grown  mere  calcified  oys- 
ter-shell, or  were  it  polished  mother-of-pearl,  inwards  almost  to 
the  very  heart  of  the  poor  man  :  —  yes  then,  you  may  say,  his 
usefulness  once  more  is  quite  obstructed  :  once  more,  he  cannot 
go  abroad  and  do  business  in  the  world  ;  it  is  time  that  he  take  to 
bed,  and  prepare  for  departure,  which  cannot  now  be  distant ! 

Ubi  homines  sunt  modi  sunt.  Habit  is  the  deepest  law  of  hu- 
man nature.  It  is  our  supreme  strength;  if  also,  in  certain  cir- 
cumstances, our  miserablest  weakness.  —  From  Stoke  to  Stowe 
11* 


126  THE    ANCIENT   MONK. 

is  as  yet  a  field,  all  pathless,  untrodden  :  from  Stoke  where  I 
live,  to  Stowe  where  I  have  to  make  my  merchandises,  perform 
my  businesses,  consult  my  heavenly  oracles,  there  is  as  yet  no 
path  or  human  footprint ;  and  I,  impelled  by  such  necessities, 
must  nevertheless  undertake  the  journey.  Let  me  go  once,  scan- 
ning my  way  with  any  earnestness  of  outlook,  and  successfully 
arriving,  my  footprints  are  an  invitation  to  me  a  second  time  to  go 
by  the  same  way.  It  is  easier  than  any  other  way  :  the  industry 
of  '  scanning '  lies  already  invested  in  it  for  me  ;  I  can  go  this 
time  with  less  of  scanning,  or  without  scanning  at  all.  Nay  the 
very  sight  of  my  footprints,  what  a  comfort  for  me  ;  and  in  a  de- 
gree, for  all  my  brethren  of  mankind  !  The  footprints  are  trodden 
and  retrodden ;  the  path  wears  ever  broader,  smoother,  into  a 
broad  highway,  where  even  wheels  can  run  ;  and  many  travel 
it ;  —  till  —  till  the  Town  of  Stowe  disappear  from  that  locality 
(as  towns  have  been  known  to  do),  or  no  merchandising,  heavenly 
oracle,  or  real  business  any  longer  exist  for  one  there  :  then  why 
should  anybody  travel  the  way  1  —  Habit  is  our  primal,  funda- 
mental law  ;  Habit  and  Imitation,  there  is  nothing  more  perennial 
in  us  than  these  two.  They  are  the  source  of  all  Working  and 
all  Apprenticeship,  of  all  Practice  and  all  Learning,  in  this 
world. 

Yes,  the  wise  man  too  speaks,  and  acts,  in  Formulas  ;  all  men 
do  so.  In  general  the  more  completely  cased  with  Formulas  a 
man  may  be,  the  safer,  happier  is  it  for  him.  Thou  who,  in  an  All 
of  rotten  Formulas,  seemest  to  stand  nigh  bare,  having  indig- 
nantly shaken  off  the  superannuated  rags  and  unsound  callosities  of 
Formulas,  —  consider  how  thou  too  art  still  clothed  !  This  English 
Nationality,  whatsoever  from  uncounted  ages  is  genuine  and  a 
fact  among  thy  native  People,  and  their  words  and  ways  :  all 
this,  has  it  not  made  for  thee  a  skin  or  second-skin,  adhesive  ac- 
tually as  thy  natural  skin]  This  thou  hast  not  stript  off,  this 
thou  wilt  never  strip  off:  the  humour  that  thy  mother  gave  thee 
has  to  shew  itself  through  this.  A  common,  or  it  may  be  an  un- 
common Englishman  thou  art ;  but  good  Heavens,  what  sort  of 
Arab,  Chinaman,  Jew-Clothesman,  Turk,  Hindoo,  African  Man- 
dingo,  wouldst  thou  have  been,  thou  with  those  mother-qualities 
of  thine ! 


THE    BEGINNINGS.  127 

It  strikes  me  dumb  to  look  over  the  long  series  of  faces,  such 
as  any  full  Church,  Courthouse,  London-Tavern  Meeting,  or  mis- 
cellany of  men  will  shew  them.  Some  score  or  two  of  years 
ago,  all  these  were  little  red-coloured  pulpy  infants  ;  each  of  them 
capable  of  being  kneaded,  baked  into  any  social  form  you  chose  :  yet 
see  now  how  they  are  fixed  and  hardened,  —  into  artisans,  artists, 
clergy,  gentry,  learned  sergeants,  unlearned  dandies,  and  can  and 
shall  now  be  nothing  else  henceforth  ! 

Mark  on  that  nose  the  colour  left  by  too  copious  port  and 
viands ;  to  which  the  profuse  cravat  with  exorbitant  breastpin, 
and  the  fixed,  forward,  and  as  it  were  menacing  glance  of  the  eyes 
correspond.  That  is  a  '  Man  of  Business  ; '  prosperous  manufac- 
turer, house-contractor,  engineer,  law-manager  ;  his  eye,  nose, 
cravat  have,  in  such  work  and  fortune,  got  such  a  character  : 
deny  him  not  thy  praise,  thy  pity.  Pity  him  too,  the  Hard-handed, 
with  bony  brow,  rudely  combed  hair,  eyes  looking  out  as  in 
labour,  in  difficulty  and  uncertainty  ;  rude  mouth,  the  lips  coarse, 
loose,  as  in  hard  toil  and  lifelong  fatigue  they  have  got  the  habit 
of  hanging  :  —  hast  thou  seen  aught  more  touching  than  the  rude 
intelligence,  so  cramped,  yet  energetic,  unsubduable,  true,  which 
looks  out  of  that  marred  visage?  Alas,  and  his  poor  wife,  with 
her  own  hands,  washed  that  cotton  neckcloth  for  him,  buttoned 
that  coarse  shirt,  sent  him  forth  creditably  trimmed  as  she  could. 
In  such  imprisonment  lives  he,  for  his  part ;  man  cannot  now 
deliver  him :  the  red  pulpy  infant  has  been  baked  and  fash- 
ioned so. 

Or  what  kind  of  baking  was  it  that  this  other  brother-mortal 
got,  which  has  baked  him  into  the  genus  Dandy  1  Elegant 
Vacuum  ;  serenely  looking  down  upon  all  Plenums  and  Entities, 
as  low  and  poor  to  his  serene  Chimeraship  and  iVowentity  labori- 
ously attained !  Heroic  Vacuum ;  inexpugnable,  while  purse 
and  present  condition  of  society  hold  out ;  curable  by  no  hellebore. 
The  doom  of  Fate  was,  Be  thou  a  Dandy  !  Have  thy  eye-glasses, 
opera-glasses,  thy  Long-Acre  cabs  with  white-breeched  tiger,  thy 
yawning  impassivities,  pococurantisms  ;  ^  thyself  in  Dandyhood, 
undeliverable ;  it  is  thy  doom. 

And  all  these,  we  say,  were  red-coloured  infants  ;  of  the  same 
pulp  and  stuff,  few  years  ago ;    now  irretrievably  shaped  and 


128  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

kneaded  as  we  see  !  Formulas  ?  There  is  no  mortal  extant,  out 
of  the  depths  of  Bedlam,  but  lives  all  skinned,  thatched,  covered 
over  with  Formulas  ;  and  is,  as  it  were,  held  in  from  delirium  and 
the  Inane  by  his  Formulas  !  They  are  withal  the  most  beneficent, 
indispensable  of  human  equipments :  blessed  he  who  has  a  skin 
and  tissues,  so  it  be  a  living  one,  and  the  heart-pulse  everywhere 
discernible  through  it.  Monachism,  Feudalism,  with  a  real  King 
Plantagenet,  with  real  Abbots  Samson,  and  their  other  living 
realities,  how  blessed  !  — 

Not  without  a  mournful  interest  have  we  surveyed  this  authen- 
tic image  of  a  Time  now  wholly  swallowed.  Mournful  reflections 
crowd  on  us  ;  and  yet  consolatory.  How  many  brave  men  have 
lived  before  Agamemnon  !  Here  is  a  brave  governor  Samson,  a 
man  fearing  God,  and  fearing  nothing  else  ;  of  whom  as  First 
Lord  of  the  Treasury,  as  King,  Chief  Editor,  High  Priest,  we 
could  be  so  glad  and  proud  ;  of  whom  nevertheless  Fame  has 
altogether  forgotten  to  make  mention !  The  faint  image  of  him, 
revived  in  this  hour,  is  found  in  the  gossip  of  one  poor  Monk,  and 
in  Nature  nowhere  else.  Oblivion  had  so  nigh  swallowed  him 
altogether,  even  to  the  echo  of  his  ever  having  existed.  What  regi- 
ments and  hosts  and  generations  of  such  has  Oblivion  already 
swallowed !  Their  crumbled  dust  makes  up  the  soil  our  life-fruit 
grows  on.  Said  I  not,  as  my  old  Norse  Fathers  taught  me,  The 
Life-tree  Igdrasil,  which  waves  round  thee  in  this  hour,  whereof 
thou  in  this  hour  art  portion,  has  its  roots  down  deep  in  the  oldest 
Death-Kingdoms  ;  and  grows  ;  the  Three  Nomas,  or  Times,  Past, 
Present,  Future,  watering  it  from  the  Sacred  Well ! 

For  example,  who  taught  thee  to  speak  ?  From  the  day  when 
two  hairy-naked  or  fig-leaved  Human  Figures  began,  as  uncom- 
fortable dummies,  anxious  no  longer  to  be  dumb,  but  to  impart 
themselves  to  one  another ;  and  endeavoured,  with  gaspings,  ges- 
turings,  with  unsyllabled  cries,  with  painful  pantomime  and  inter- 
jections, in  a  very  unsuccessful  manner,  —  up  to  the  writing  of 
this  present  copyright  Book,  which  also  is  not  very  successful ! 
Between  that  day  and  this,  I  say,  there  has  been  a  pretty  space  of 
time  ;  a  pretty  spell  of  work,  which  somebody  has  done  !  Think- 
est  thou  there  were  no  poets  till  Dan  Chaucer  ?    No  heart  burning 


THE    BEGINNINGS.  129 

with  a  thought,  which  it  could  not  hold,  and  had  no  word  for ;  and 
needed  to  shape  and  coin  a  word  for,  —  what  thou  callest  a  meta- 
phor, trope,  or  the  like  1  For  every  word  we  have,  there  was 
such  a  man  and  poet.  The  coldest  word  was  once  a  glowing  new 
metaphor,  and  bold  questionable  originality.  '  Thy  very  atten- 
tion, does  it  not  mean  an  attentio,  a  stretching-to  ? '  Fancy 
that  act  of  the  mind,  which  all  were  conscious  of,  which  none  had 
yet  named,  —  when  this  new  'poet'  first  felt  bound  and  driven 
to  name  it !  His  questionable  originality,  and  new  glowing  meta- 
phor, was  found  adoptable,  intelligible  ;  and  remains  our  name  for 
it  to  this  day. 

Literature  :  —  and  look  at  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  the  Masonries 
and  Worships  and  Quasi-Worships  that  are  there  ;  not  to  speak 
of  Westminster  Hall  and  its  wigs  !  Men  had  not  a  hammer  to 
begin  with,  not  a  syllabled  articulation  :  they  had  it  all  to  make  ; 
—  and  they  have  made  it.  What  thousand  thousand  articulate, 
semi-articulate,  earnest-stammering  Prayers  ascending  up  to 
Heaven,  from  hut  and  cell,  in  many  lands,  in  many  centuries, 
from  the  fervent  kindled  souls  of  innumerable  men,  each  struggling 
to  pour  itself  forth  incompletely  as  it  might,  before  the  incompletest 
Liturgy  could  be  compiled  !  The  Liturgy,  or  adoptable  and  gen- 
erally adopted  Set  of  Prayers  and  Prayer-Method,  was  what  we 
can  call  the  Select  Adoptabilities,  '  Select  Beauties  '  well-edited 
(by  (Ecumenic  Councils  and  other  Useful-Knowledge  Societies) 
from  that  wide  waste  imbroglio  of  Prayers  already  extant  and  ac- 
cumulated, good  and  bad.  The  good  were  found  adoptable  by 
men  ;  were  gradually  got  together,  well-edited,  accredited  :  the 
bad,  found  inappropriate,  unadoptable,  were  gradually  forgotten, 
disused  and  burnt.  It  is  the  way  with  human  things.  The  first 
man  who,  looking  with  opened  soul  on  this  august  Heaven  and 
Earth,  this  Beautiful  and  Awful,  which  we  name  Nature,  Uni- 
verse and  such  like,  the  essence  of  which  remains  forever  Un- 
nameable  ;  he  who  first,  gazing  into  this,  fell  on  his  knees  awe- 
struck, in  silence  as  is  likeliest,  — he,  driven  by  inner  necessity, 
the  '  audacious  original '  that  he  was,  had  done  a  thing,  too, 
which  all  thoughtful  hearts  saw  straightway  to  be  an  expressive, 
altogether  adoptable  thing  !  To  bow  the  knee  was  ever  since  the 
attitude  of  supplication.     Earlier  than  any  spoken  Prayers,  Lita- 


130  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

nias,  or  Leitourgias ;  the  beginning  of  all  Worship,  —  which 
needed  but  a  beginning,  so  rational  was  it.  What  a  poet  he  ! 
Yes,  this  bold  original  was  a  successful  one  withal.  The  wellhead 
this  one,  hidden  in  the  primeval  dusks  and  distances,  from  whom 
as  from  a  Nile-source  all  Forms  of  Worship  flow  :  —  such  a  Nile- 
river  (somewhat  muddy  and  malarious  now  !)  of  Forms  of  Wor- 
ship sprang  there,  and  flowed,  and  flows,  down  to  Puseyism, 
Rotatory  Calabash,  Archbishop  Laud  at  St.  Catherine  Creed's, 
and  perhaps  lower  ! 

Things  rise,  I  say,  in  that  way.  The  Iliad  Poem,  and  indeed 
most  other  poetic,  especially  epic  things,  have  risen  as  the  Lit- 
urgy did.  The  great  Iliad  in  Greece,  and  the  small  Robin  Hood's 
Garland  in  England,  are  each,  as  I  understand,  the  well-edited 
i  Select  Beauties  '  of  an  immeasurable  waste  imbroglio  of  Heroic 
Ballads  in  their  respective  centuries  and  countries.  Think  what 
strumming  of  the  seven-stringed  heroic  lyre,  torturing  of  the  less 
heroic  fiddle-catgut,  in  Hellenic  Kings'  Courts,  and  English  way- 
side Public  Houses  ;  and  beating  of  the  studious  Poetic  brain, 
and  gasping  here  too  in  the  semi-articulate  windpipe  of  Poetic 
men,  before  the  Wrath  of  a  Divine  Achilles,  the  Prowess  of  a 
Will  Scarlet  or  Wakefield  Pinder,  could  be  adequately  sung  ! 
Honour  to  you,  ye  nameless  great  and  greatest  ones,  ye  long-for- 
gotten brave  ! 

Nor  was  the  Statute  Be  Tallagio  non  concedendo,  nor  any  Stat- 
ute, Law-method,  Lawyer's-wig,  much  less  were  the  Statute- 
Book  and  Four  Courts,  with  Coke  upon  Lyttleton  and  Three 
Estates  of  Parliament  in  the  rear  of  them,  got  together  without 
human  labour,  —  mostly  forgotten  now  !  From  the  time  of  Cain's 
slaying  Abel  by  swift  head-breakage,  to  this  time  of  killing  your 
man  in  Chancery  by  inches,  and  slow  heart-break  for  forty  years, 
—  there  too  is  an  interval !  Venerable  Justice  herself  began  by 
Wild- Justice  ;  all  Law  is  as  a  tamed  furrowfield,  slowly  worked 
out,  and  rendered  arable,  from  the  waste  jungle  of  Club-Law. 
Valiant  Wisdom  tilling  and  draining  ;  escorted  by  owl-eyed  Pe- 
dantry, by  owlish  and  vulturish  and  many  other  forms  of  Folly  ;  — 
the  valiant  husbandman  assiduously  tilling  ;  the  blind  greedy  ene- 
my too  assiduously  sowing  tares  !  It  is  because  there  is  yet  in 
venerable  wigged  Justice  some  wisdom,  amid  such  mountains  of 


THE    BEGINNINGS.  131 

wiggeries  and  folly,  that  men  have  not  cast  her  into  the  River  ; 
that  she  still  sits  there,  like  Dry  den's  Head  in  the  Battle  of  the 
Books,  —  a  huge  helmet,  a  huge  mountain  of  greased  parchment, 
of  unclean  horsehair,  first  striking  the  eye  ;  and  then  in  the  inner- 
most corner,  visible  at  last,  in  size  as  a  hazelnut,  a  real  fraction  of 
God's  Justice,  perhaps  not  yet  unattainable  to  some,  surely  still 
indispensable  to  all ;  —  and  men  know  not  what  to  do  with  her  ! 
Lawyers  were  not  all  pedants,  voluminous  voracious  persons ; 
Lawyers  too  were  poets,  were  heroes,  —  or  their  Law  had  been 
past  the  Nore  long  before  this  time.  Their  Owlisms,  Vulturisms, 
to  an  incredible  extent,  will  disappear  by  and  by,  their  Heroisms 
only  remaining,  and  the  Helmet  be  reduced  to  something  like  the 
size  of  the  head,  we  hope  !  — 

It  is  all  work  and  forgotten  work,  this  peopled,  clothed,  articu- 
late-speaking, high-towered,  wide-acred  World.  The  hands  of 
forgotten  brave  men  have  made  it  a  World  for  us  ;  they,  — honour 
to  them  ;  they,  in  spite  of  the  idle  and  the  dastard.  This  English 
Land,  here  and  now,  is  the  summary  of  what  was  found  of  wise, 
and  noble,  and  accordant  with  God's  Truth,  in  all  the  generations 
of  English  Men.  Our  English  Speech  is  speakable  because  there 
were  Hero-Poets  of  our  blood  and  lineage ;  speakable  in  propor- 
tion to  the  number  of  these.  This  Land  of  England  has  its  con- 
querors, possessors,  which  change  from  epoch  to  epoch,  from  day 
to  day  ;  but  its  real  conquerors,  creators,  and  eternal  proprietors 
are  these  following,  and  their  representatives  if  you  can  find 
them  :  All  the  Heroic  souls  that  ever  were  in  England,  each  in 
their  degree  ;  all  the  men  that  ever  cut  a  thistle,  drained  a  puddle 
out  of  England,  contrived  a  wise  scheme  in  England,  did  or  said 
a  true  and  valiant  thing  in  England.  I  tell  thee,  they  had  not  a 
hammer  to  begin  with  ;  and  yet  Wren  built  St.  Paul's  :  not  an  ar- 
ticulated syllable  ;  and  yet  there  have  come  English  Literatures, 
Elizabethan  Literatures,  Satanic-School,  Cockney-School  and 
other  Literatures  ;  —  once  more,  as  in  the  old  time  of  the  Leitour- 
gia,  a  most  waste  imbroglio,  and  world-wide  jungle  and  jumble  ; 
waiting  terribly  to  be  '  well-edited,'  and  '  well-burnt !  '  Arachne 
started  with  forefinger  and  thumb,  and  had  not  even  a  distaff;  yet 
thou  seest  Manchester,  and  Cotton  Cloth,  which  will  shelter 
naked  backs,  at  two-pence  an  ell. 


132  THE    ANCIENT    MONK. 

Work?  The  quantity  of  done  and  forgotten  work  that  lies  silent 
under  my  feet  in  this  world,  and  escorts  and  attends  me,  and  sup- 
ports and  keeps  me  alive,  wheresoever  I  walk  or  stand,  whatsoever 
I  think  or  do,  gives  rise  to  reflections  !  Is  it  not  enough,  at  any 
rate,  to  strike  the  thing  called  '  Fame  '  into  total  silence  for  a 
wise  man  ?  For  fools  and  unreflective  persons,  she  is  and  will  be 
very  noisy,  this  '  Fame,'  and  talks  of  her  '  immortals '  and  so 
forth  :  but  if  you  will  consider  it,  what  is  she  ?  Abbot  Samson 
was  not  nothing  because  nobody  said  anything  of  him.  Or  think- 
est  thou,  the  Right  Honourable  Sir  Jabesh  Windbag  can  be  made 
something  by  Parliamentary  Majorities  and  Leading  Articles? 
Her  '  immortals  !  '  Scarcely  two  hundred  years  back  can  Fame 
recollect  articulately  at  all  ;  and  there  she  but  maunders  and 
mumbles.  She  manages  to  recollect  a  Shakspeare  or  so  ;  and 
prates,  considerably  like  a  goose,  about  him  ;  —  and  in  the  rear  of 
that,  onwards  to  the  birth  of  Theuth,  to  Hengst's  Invasion,  and 
the  bosom  of  Eternity,  it  was  all  blank  ;  and  the  respectable  Teu- 
tonic Languages,  Teutonic  Practices,  Existences  all  came  of  their 
own  accord,  as  the  grass  springs,  as  the  trees  grow  ;  no  Poet,  no 
work  from  the  inspired  heart  of  a  Man  needed  there  ;  and  Fame 
has  not  an  articulate  word  to  say  about  it !  Or  ask  her,  What, 
with  all  conceivable  appliances  and  mnemonics,  including  apotheo- 
sis and  human  sacrifices  among  the  number,  she  carries  in  her 
head  with  regard  to  a  Wodan,  even  a  Moses,  or  other  such?  She 
begins  to  be  uncertain  as  to  what  they  were,  whether  spirits  or 
men  of  mould, — gods,  charlatans;  begins  sometimes  to  have  a 
misgiving  that  they  were  mere  symbols,  ideas  of  the  mind  ;  per- 
haps nonentities,  and  Letters  of  the  Alphabet !  She  is  the 
noisiest,  inarticulately  babbling,  hissing,  screaming,  foolishest, 
unmusicalest  of  fowls  that  fly;  and  needs  no  '  trumpet,'  I  think, 
but  her  own  enormous  goose-throat,  —  measuring  several  degrees 
of  celestial  latitude,  so  to  speak.  Her  'wings,'  in  these  days, 
have  grown  far  swifter  than  ever ;  but  her  goose-throat  hitherto 
seems  only  larger,  louder  and  foolisher  than  ever.  She  is  tran- 
sitory, futile,  a  goose-goddess  :  — if  she  were  not  transitory,  what 
would  become  of  us !  It  is  a  chief  comfort  that  she  forgets  us 
all ;  all,  even  to  the  very  Wodans ;  and  grows  to  consider  us,  at 
last,  as  probably  nonentities  and  Letters  of  the  Alphabet. 


THE    BEGINNINGS.  133 

Yes,  a  noble  Abbot  Samson  resigns  himself  to  Oblivion  too  ; 
feels  it  no  hardship,  but  a  comfort ;  counts  it  as  a  still  resting- 
place,  from  much  sick  fret  and  fever  and  stupidity,  which  in  the 
night-watches  often  made  his  strong  heart  sigh.  Your  most 
sweet  voices,  making  one  enormous  goose-voice,  0  Bobus  and 
Company,  how  can  they  be  a  guidance  for  any  Son  of  Adam?  In 
silence  of  you  and  the  like  of  you,  the  '  small  still  voices '  will 
speak  to  him  better  ;  in  which  does  lie  guidance. 

My  friend,  all  speech  and  rumour  is  shortlived,  foolish,  untrue. 
Genuine  Work  alone,  what  thou  workest  faithfully,  that  is  eter- 
nal, as  the  Almighty  Founder  and  World-Builder  himself.  Stand 
thou  by  that ;  and  let  '  Fame  '  and  the  rest  of  it  go  prating. 

'  Heard  are  the  Voices, 

Voice  of  the  Sages, 

The  Worlds  and  the  Ages  : 
"  Choose  well,  your  choice  is 

Brief  and  yet  endless  ; 

Here  eyes  do  regard  you, 
In  Eternity's  stillness ; 
Here  is  all  fulness, 
Ye  brave,  to  reward  you; 
Work,  and  despair  not."  '  * 


*  Goethe. 


12 


BOOK  III. 
THE  MODERN  WORKER. 


CHAPTER  I. 


PHENOMENA. 


But,  it  is  said,  our  religion  is  gone  :  we  no  longer  believe  in  St. 
Edmund,  no  longer  see  the  figure  of  him  '  on  the  rim  of  the  sky,' 
minatory  or  confirmatory !  God's  absolute  Laws,  sanctioned  by 
an  eternal  Heaven  and  an  eternal  Hell,  have  become  Moral  Phi- 
losophies, sanctioned  by  able  computations  of  Profit  and  Loss,  by 
weak  considerations  of  Pleasures  of  Virtue  and  the  Moral  Sublime. 

It  is  even  so.  To  speak  in  the  ancient  dialect,  we  '  have  for- 
gotten God  ;'  —  in  the  most  modern  dialect  and  very  truth  of  the 
matter,  we  have  taken  up  the  Fact  of  this  Universe  as  it  is  not. 
We  have  quietly  closed  our  eyes  to  the  eternal  Substance  of 
things,  and  opened  them  only  to  the  Shews  and  Shams  of  things. 
We  quietly  believe  this  Universe  to  be  intrinsically  a  great  unin- 
telligible Perhaps  ;  extrinsically,  clear  enough,  it  is  a  great, 
most  extensive  Cattlefold  and  Workhouse,  with  most  extensive 
Kitchen-ranges,  Dining-tables, —  whereat  he  is  wise  who  can  find 
a  place  !  All  the  Truth  of  this  Universe  is  uncertain  ;  only  the 
profit  and  loss  of  it,  the  pudding  and  praise  of  it,  are  and  lemain 
very  visible  to  the  practical  man. 

There  is  no  longer  any  God  for  us  !  God's  Laws  are  become  a 
Greatest-Happiness  Principle,  a  Parliamentary  Expediency  :  the 
Heavens  overarch  us  only  as  an  Astronomical  Time-keeper  ;  a 
butt  for  Herschel-telescopes  to  shoot  science  at,  to  shoot  sentimen- 
talities at  :  —  in  our  and  old  Jonson's  dialect,  man  has  lost  the 
soul  out  of  him  ;  and  now,  after  the  due  period,  —  begins  to  find 
the  want  of  it !  This  is  verily  the  plague-spot ;  centre  of  the  uni- 
versal Social  Gangrene,  threatening  all  modern  things  with  fright- 
ful death.  To  him  that  will  consider  it,  here  is  the  stem,  with 
its  roots  and  taproot,  with  its  world-wide  upas-boughs  and  ac- 
cursed poison-exudations,  under  which  the  world  lies  writhing  in 

19* 


133  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

atrophy  and  agony.  You  touch  the  focal-centre  of  all  our  disease, 
of  our  frightful  nosology  of  diseases,  when  you  lay  your  hand  on 
this.  There  is  no  religion  ;  there  is  no  God  ;  man  has  lost  his 
soul,  and  vainly  seeks  antiseptic  salt.  Vainly  :  in  killing  Kings, 
in  passing  Reform  Bills,  in  French  Revolutions,  Manchester  Insur- 
rections, is  found  no  remedy.  The  foul  elephantine  leprosy, 
alleviated  for  an  hour,  reappears  in  new  force  and  desperateness 
next  hour. 

For  actually  this  is  not  the  real  fact  of  the  world  ;  the  world  is 
not  made  so,  but  otherwise! — Truly,  any  Society  setting  out 
from  this  No-God  hypothesis  will  arrive  at  a  result  or  two.  The 
ZThveracities,  escorted,  each  Unveracity  of  them  by  its  corres- 
ponding Misery  and  Penalty  ;  the  Phantasms,  and  Fatuities,  and 
ten-years  Corn-Law  Debatings,  that  shall  walk  the  Earth  at  noon- 
day, —  must  needs  be  numerous  !  The  Universe  being  intrinsic- 
ally a  Perhaps,  being  too  probably  an  '  infinite  Humbug,'  why 
should  any  minor  Humbug  astonish  us?  It  is  all  according  to 
the  order  of  Nature  ;  and  Phantasms  riding  with  huge  clatter 
along  the  streets,  from  end  to  end  of  our  existence,  astonish 
nobody.  Enchanted  St.  Ives?  Workhouses  and  Joe-Manton  Aris- 
tocracies ;  giant  Working  Mammonism  near  strangled  in  the  par- 
tridge-nets of  giant-looking  Idle  Dilettantism, — this,  in  all  its 
branches,  in  its  thousand  thousand  modes  and  figures,  is  a  sight 
familiar  to  us. 

The  Popish  Religion,  we  are  told,  flourishes  extremely  in  these 
years  ;  and  is  the  most  vivacious-looking  religion  to  be  met  with 
at  present.  "  Elk  a  trois  cents  ans  dans  le  ventre"  counts  M. 
Jouffrov  :  "  c'est  pourqnoi  je  la  respecte!" —  The  old  Pope  of 
Rome,  finding  it  laborious  to  kneel  so  long  while  they  cart  him 
through  the  streets  to  bless  the  people  on  Corpus- Christi  Day, 
complains  of  rheumatism  ;  whereupon  his  Cardinals  consult ;  — 
construct  him,  after  some  study,  a  stuffed  cloaked  figure,  of  iron 
and  wood,  with  wool  or  baked  hair  ;  and  place  it  in  a  kneeling 
posture.  Stuffed  figure,  or  rump  of  a  figure  ;  to  this  stuffed  rump 
he,  sitting  at  his  ease  on  a  lower  level,  joins,  by  the  aid  of  cloaks 
and  drapery,  his  living  head  and  outspread  hands  :  the  rump 
with   its   cloaks   kneels,  the   Pope  looks,   and  holds  his   hands 


PHENOMENA.  139 

spread  ;  and  so  the  two  in  concert  bless  the  Roman  population  on 
Corpus- Christi  Day,  as  well  as  they  can. 

I  have  considered  this  amphibious  Pope,  with  the  wool-and- 
iron back,  with  the  flesh  head  and  hands ;  and  endeavoured  to 
calculate  his  horoscope.  I  reckon  him  the  remarkablest  Pontiff 
that  has  darkened  God's  daylight,  or  painted  himself  in  the  hu- 
man retina,  for  these  several  thousand  years.  Nay,  since  Chaos 
first  shivered,  and  '  sneezed,'  as  the  Arabs  say,  with  the  first  shaft 
of  sunlight  shot  through  it,  what  stranger  product  was  there  of 
Nature  and  Art  working  together?  Here  is  a  Supreme  Priest 
who  believes  God  to  be  —  What  in  the  name  of  God  does  he  be- 
•lieve  God  to  be  1  —  and  discerns  that  all  worship  of  God  is  a 
scenic  phantasmagory  of  wax-candles,  organ-blasts,  Gregorian 
Chants,  mass-brayings,  purple  monsignori,  wool-and-iron  rumps, 
artistically  spread  out,  —  to  save  the  ignorant  from  worse. 

O  reader,  I  say  not  who  are  Belial's  elect.  This  poor  amphibi- 
ous Pope  too  gives  loaves  to  the  Poor  ;  has  in  him  more  good 
latent  than  he  is  himself  aware  of.  His  poor  Jesuits,  in  the 
late  Italian  Cholera,  were,  with  a  few  German  Doctors,  the  only 
creatures  whom  dastard  terror  had  not  driven  mad :  they  de- 
scended fearless  into  all  gulfs  and  bedlams ;  watched  over  the 
pillow  of  the  dying,  with  help,  with  counsel  and  hope ;  shone  as 
luminous  fixed  stars,  when  all  else  had  gone  out  in  chactic  night : 
honour  to  them  !  This  poor  Pope,  —  who  knows  what  good  is  in 
him  ?  In  a  Time  otherwise  too  prone  to  forget,  he  keeps  up  the 
mournfulest  ghastly  memorial  of  the  Highest,  Blessedest,  which 
once  was  ;  which,  in  new  fit  forms,  will  again  partly  have  to  be. 
Is  he  not  as  a  perpetual  death's-head  and  cross-bones,  with  their 
Resurgam,  on  the  grave  of  a  Universal  Heroism,  —  grave  of  a 
Christianity?  Such  Noblenesses,  purchased  by  the  world's  best 
heart's-blood,  must  not  be  lost ;  we  cannot  afford  to  lose  them,  in 
what  confusions  soever.  To  all  of  us  the  day  will  come,  to  a  few 
of  us  it  has  already  come,  when  no  mortal,  with  his  heart  yearn- 
ing for  a  '  Divine  Humility,'  or  other  '  Highest  form  of  Valour,' 
will  need  to  look  for  it  in  death's-heads,  but  will  see  it  round  him 
in  here  and  there  a  beautiful  living  head. 

Besides,  there  is  in  this  poor  Pope,  and  his  practice  of  the 
Scenic  Theory  of  Worship,  a  frankness  which  I  rather  honour. 


140  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Not  half  and  half,  but  with  undivided  heart  does  he  set  about  wor- 
shipping by  stage-machinery ;  as  if  there  were  now,  and  could 
again  be,  in  Nature  no  other.  He  will  ask  you,  What  other? 
Under  this  my  Gregorian  Chant,  and  beautiful  wax-light  Phantas- 
magory,  kindly  hidden  from  you  is  an  Abyss,  of  black  Doubt, 
Scepticism,  nay  Sansculottic  Jacobinism  ;  an  Orcus  that  has  no 
bottom.  Think  of  that.  '  Groby  Pool  is  thatched  with  pan- 
cakes,' —  as  Jeannie  Deans's  Innkeeper  defied  it  to  be  !  The  Bot- 
tomless of  Scepticism,  Atheism,  Jacobinism,  behold,  it  is  thatched 
over,  hidden  from  your  despair,  by  stage-properties  judiciously 
arranged.  This  stuffed  rump  of  mine  saves  not  me  only  from 
rheumatism,  but  you  also  from  what  other  isms!  In  this  your. 
Life-pilgrimage  Nowhither,  a  fine  Squallacci  marching-music, 
and  Gregorian  Chant,  accompanies  you,  and  the  hollow  Night  of 
Orcus  is  well  hid  ! 

Yes  truly,  few  men  that  worship  by  the  rotatory  Calabash  of 
the  Calmucks  do  it  in  half  so  great,  frank  or  effectual  a  way. 
Drury-lane,  it  is  said,  and  that  is  saying  much,  may  learn  from 
him  in  the  dressing  of  parts,  in  the  arrangement  of  lights  and 
shadows.  He  is  the  greatest  Play-actor  that  at  present  draws  sal- 
ary in  this  world.  Poor  Pope  ;  and  I  am  told  he  is  fast  growing 
bankrupt  too  ;  and  will,  in  a  measurable  term  of  years  (a  great 
way  within  the  '  three  hundred'),  not  have  a  penny  to  make  his 
pot  boil  ?  His  old  rheumatic  back  will  then  get  to  rest ;  and  him- 
self and  his  stage-properties  sleep  well  in  Chaos  forevermore. 

Or,  alas,  why  go  to  Rome  for  Phantasms  walking  the  streets  ? 
Phantasms,  «ghosts,  in  this  midnight  hour,  hold  jubilee,  and 
screech  and  jabber  ;  and  the  question  rather  were,  What  high 
Reality  anywhere  is  yet  awake  ?  Aristocracy  has  become  Phan- 
tasm-Aristocracy, no  longer  able  to  do  its  work,  not  in  the  least 
conscious  that  it  has  any  work  longer  to  do.  Unable,  totally  care- 
less to  do  its  work ;  careful  only  to  clamour  for  the  ivages  of  do- 
ing its  work, — nay  for  higher,  and  palpably  undue  wages,  and 
Corn-Laws  and  increase  of  rents  ;  the  old  rate  of  wages  not  being 
adequate  now  !  In  hydra-wrestle,  giant  '  Millocr&cy '  so  called, 
a  real  giant,  though  as  yet  a  blind  one  and  but  half-awake,  wres- 
tles and  wrings  in  choking  nightmare,  '  like  to  be  strangled  in  the 


PHENOMENA.  141 

partridge-nets  of  Phantasm -Aristocracy,'  as  we  said,  which  fan- 
cies itself  still  to  be  a  giant.  Wrestles,  as  under  nightmare,  till 
it  do  awaken  ;  and  gasps  and  struggles  thousandfold,  we  may- 
say,  in  a  truly  painful  manner,  through  all  fibres  of  our  English 
Existence,  in  these  hours  and  years  !  Is  our  poor  English  Ex- 
istence wholly  becoming  a  Nightmare  ;  full  of  mere  Phan- 
tasms ?  — 

The  Champion  of  England,  cased  in  iron  or  tin,  rides  into 
Westminster  Hall,  '  being  lifted  into  his  saddle  with  little  assist- 
ance,' and  there  asks,  If  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  world,  under 
the  cope  of  Heaven,  is  any  man  or  demon  that  dare  question  the 
right  of  this  King  1  Under  the  cope  of  Heaven  no  man  makes 
intelligible  answer,  —  as  several  men  ought  already  to  have  done. 
Does  not  this  Champion  too  know  the  world ;  that  it  is  a  huge 
Imposture,  and  bottomless  Inanity,  thatched  over  with  bright 
cloth  and  other  ingenious  tissues'?  Him  let  us  leave  there,  ques- 
tioning all  men  and  demons. 

Him  we  have  left  to  his  destiny ;  but  whom  else  have  we 
found  1  From  this  the  highest  apex  of  things,  downwards  through 
all  strata  and  breadths,  how  many  fully  awakened  Realities  have 
we  fallen  in  with  :  —  alas,  on  the  contrary,  what  troops  and  popu- 
lations of  Phantasms,  not  God-Veracities  but  Devil-Falsities,  down 
to  the  very  lowest  stratum,  —  which  now,  by  such  superincumbent 
weight  of  Unveracities,  lies  enchanted  in  St.  Ives'  Workhouses, 
broad  enough,  helpless  enough  !  You  will  walk  in  no  public 
thoroughfare  or  remotest  byway  of  English  Existence  but  you 
will  meet  a  man,  an  interest  of  men,  that  has  given  up  hope  in 
the  Everlasting,  True,  and  placed  its  hope  in  the  Temporary, 
half  or  wholly  False.  The  Honourable  Member  complains  un- 
musically that  there  is  '  devil' s-dust '  in  Yorkshire  cloth.  York- 
shire cloth, — why,  the  very  Paper  I  now  write  on  is  made,  it 
seems,  partly  of  plaster-lime  well-smoothed,  and  obstructs  my 
writing  !  You  are  lucky  if  you  can  find  now  any  good  Paper,  — 
any  work  really  done;  search  where  you  will,  from  highest 
Phantasm  apex  to  lowest  Enchanted  basis  ! 

Consider,  for  example,  that  great  Hat  seven-feet  high,  which 
now  perambulates  London  Streets :  which  my  Friend  Sauerteig 
xegarded  justly  as  one  of  our  English  notabilities  ;  "the  topmost 


142  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

point  as  yet,"  said  he,  "  would  it  were  your  culminating  and  re- 
turning point,  to  which  English  Puffery  has  been  observed  to 
reach!" — The  Hatter  in  the  Strand  of  London,  instead  of 
making  better  felt-hats  than  another,  mounts  a  huge  lath-and- 
plaster  Hat,  seven-feet  high,  upon  wheels ;  sends  a  man  to  drive 
it  through  the  streets ;  hoping  to  be  saved  thereby.  He  has  not 
attempted  to  make  better  hats,  as  he  was  appointed  by  the  Uni- 
verse to  do,  and  as  with  this  ingenuity  of  his  he  could  very  pro- 
bably have  done  ;  but  his  whole  industry  is  turned  to  persuade  us 
that  he  has  made  such  !  He  too  knows  that  the  Quack  has  be- 
come God.  Laugh  not  at  him,  O  reader  ;  or  do  not  laugh  only. 
He  has  ceased  to  be  comic  ;  he  is  fast  becoming  tragic.  To  me 
this  all-deafening  blast  of  Puffery,  of  poor  Falsehood  grown 
necessitous,  of  poor  Heart- Atheism  fallen  now  into  Enchanted 
Workhouses,  sounds  too  surely  like  a  Doom's-blast !  I  have  to 
say  to  myself  in  old  dialect :  "  God's  blessing  is  not  written  on  all 
this;  His  curse  is  written  on  all  this!"  Unless  perhaps  the 
Universe  be  a  chimera ;  —  some  old  totally  deranged  eightday 
clock,  dead  as  brass  ;  which  the  Maker,  if  there  ever  was  any 
Maker,  has  long  ceased  to  meddle  with?  —  To  my  Friend  Sauer- 
teig  this  poor  seven-feet  Hat-manufacturer,  as  the  topstone  of 
English  Puffery,  was  very  notable. 

Alas,  that  we  natives  note  him  little,  that  we  view  him  as  a 
thing  of  course,  is  the  very  burden  of  the  misery.  We  take  it  for 
granted,  the  most  rigorous  of  us,  that  all  men  who  have  made 
anything  are  expected  and  entitled  to  make  the  loudest  possible 
proclamation  of  it  ;  call  on  a  discerning  public  to  reward  them  for 
it.  Every  man  his  own  trumpeter  ;  that  is,  to  a  really  alarming 
extent,  the  accepted  rule.  Make  loudest  possible  proclamation  of 
your  Hat :  true  proclamation  if  that  will  do  ;  if  that  will  not  do, 
then  false  proclamation,  — to  such  extent  of  falsity  as  will  serve 
your  purpose  ;  as  will  not  seem  too  false  to  be  credible  !  —  I  an- 
swer, once  for  all,  that  the  fact  is  not  so.  Nature  requires  no 
man  to  make  proclamation  of  his  doings  and  hat-makings  ;  Nature 
forbids  all  men  to  make  such.  There  is  not  a  man  or  hat-maker 
born  into  the  world  but  feels,  at  first,  that  he  is  degrading  himself 
if  he  speak  of  his  excellencies  and  prowesses,  and  supremacy  in 
his  craft:  his  inmost  heart  says  to  him,  "Leave  thy  friends  to 


PHENOMENA.  143 

speak  of  these  ;  if  possible,  thy  enemies  to  speak  of  these  ;  but  at 
all  events,  thy  friends!"  He  feels  that  he  is  already  a  poor 
braggart ;  fast  hastening  to  be  a  falsity  and  speaker  of  the  Un- 
truth. 

Nature's  Laws,  I  must  repeat,  are  eternal :  her  small  still 
voice,  speaking  from  the  inmost  heart  of  us,  shall  not,  under  ter- 
rible penalties,  be  disregarded.  No  one  man  can  depart  from  the 
truth  without  damage  to  himself;  no  one  million  of  men  ;  no 
Twenty-seven  Millions  of  men.  Shew  me  a  Nation  fallen  every- 
where into  this  course,  so  that  each  expects  it,  permits  it  to  others 
and  himself,  I  will  shew  you  a  Nation  travelling  with  one  assent 
on  the  broad  way.  The  broad  way,  however  many  Banks  of 
England,  Cotton-Mills  and  Duke's  Palaces  it  may  have  !  Not  at 
happy  Elysian  fields,  and  everlasting  crowns  of  victory,  earned 
by  silent  Valour,  will  this  Nation  arrive  ;  but  at  precipices,  de- 
vouring gulfs,  if  it  pause  not.  Nature  has  appointed  happy 
fields,  victorious  laurel-crowns  ;  but  only  to  the  brave  and  true  ; 
ZJnnature,  what  we  call  Chaos,  holds  nothing  in  it  but  vacuities, 
devouring  gulfs.  What  are  Twenty-seven  Millions,  and  their 
unanimity'?  Believe  them  not:  the  Worlds  and  the  Ages,  God 
and  Nature  and  All  Men  say  otherwise. 

'  Rhetoric  all  this?  '  No,  my  brother,  very  singular  to  say,  it 
is  Fact  all  this.  Cocker's  Arithmetic  is  not  truer.  Forgotten  in 
these  days,  it  is  old  as  the  foundations  of  the  Universe,  and  will 
endure  till  the  Universe  cease.  It  is  forgotten  now  ;  and  the  first 
mention  of  it  puckers  thy  sweet  countenance  into  a  sneer  :  but  it 
will  be  brought  to  mind  again,  —  unless  indeed  the  Law  of  Gra- 
vitation chance  to  cease,  and  men  find  that  they  can  walk  on  va- 
cancy. Unanimity  of  the  Twenty-Seven  Millions  will  do  nothing  : 
walk  not  thou  with  them  ;  fly  from  them  as  for  thy  life.  Twenty- 
seven  Millions  travelling  on  such  courses,  with  gold  jingling  in 
every  pocket,  with  vivats  heaven-high,  are  incessantly  advancing, 
let  me  again  remind  thee,  towards  the  firm-land' s  end,  —  towards 
the  end  and  extinction  of  what  Faithfulness,  Veracity,  real  Worth, 
was  in  their  way  of  life.  Their  noble  ancestors  have  fashioned 
for  them  a  '  life-road  ;  '  —  in  how  many  thousand  senses,  this ! 
There  is  not  an  old  wise  Proverb  on  their  tongue,  an  honest  Prin- 
ciple articulated  in  their  hearts  into  utterance,  a  wise  true  method 


144  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

of  doing  and  despatching  any  work  or  commerce  of  men,  but 
helps  yet  to  carry  them  forward.  Life  is  still  possible  to  them, 
because  all  is  not  yet  Puffery,  Falsity,  Mammon-worship  and  Un- 
nature ;  because  somewhat  is  yet  Faithfulness,  Veracity  and 
Valour.  With  a  certain  very  considerable  finite  quantity  of  Un- 
veracity  and  Phantasm,  social  life  is  still  possible  ;  not  with  an 
infinite  quantity  !  Exceed  your  certain  quantity,  the  seven-feet 
Hat,  and  all  things  upwards  to  the  very  Champion  cased  in  tin, 
begin  to  reel  and  flounder,  — in  Manchester  Insurrections,  Chart- 
isms, Sliding-scales  ;  the  Law  of  Gravitation  not  forgetting  to  act. 
You  advance  incessantly  towards  the  land's  end  ;  you  are,  literally 
enough,  '  consuming  the  way.'  Step  after  step,  Twenty-seven 
Million  unconscious  men  ; — till  you  are  at  the  land's  end;  till 
there  is  not  Faithfulness  enough  among  you  any  more :  and  the 
next  step  now  is  lifted  not  over  land,  but  into  air,  over  ocean-deeps 
and  roaring  abysses  :  —  unless  perhaps  the  Law  of  Gravitation 
have  forgotten  to  act  ? 

O,  it  is  frightful,  when  a  whole  Nation,  as  our  Fathers  used  to 
say,  has  'forgotten  God;'  has  remembered  only  Mammon,  and 
what  Mammon  leads  to  !  When  your  self-trumpeting  Hatmaker 
is  the  emblem  of  almost  all  makers,  and  workers,  and  men,  that 
make  anything,  —  from  soul-overseerships,  body-overseerships, 
epic  poems,  acts  of  parliament,  to  hats  and  shoe-blacking  !  Not 
one  false  man  but  does  uncountable  mischief:  how  much,  in  a 
generation  or  two,  will  Twenty-seven  Millions,  mostly  false, 
manage  to  accumulate  1  The  sum  of  it,  visible  in  every  street, 
market-place,  senate-house,  circulating-library,  cathedral,  cotton- 
mill,  and  union- workhouse,  fills  one  not  with  a  comic  feeling  ! 


CHAPTER  II. 


GOSPEL    OF    MAMMONISM. 


Reader,  even  Christian  Reader  as  thy  title  goes,  hast  thou  any 
notion  of  Heaven  and  Hell?  I  rather  apprehend,  not.  Often  as 
the  words  are  on  our  tongue,  they  have  got  a  fabulous  or  semi- 
fabulous  character  for  most  of  us,  and  pass  on  like  a  kind  of  tran- 
sient similitude,  like  a  sound  signifying  little. 

Yet  it  is  well  worth  while  for  us  to  know,  once  and  always, 
that  they  are  not  a  similitude,  nor  a  fable  nor  semi-fable  ;  that  they 
are  an  everlasting  highest  fact !  "  No  Lake  of  Sicilian  or  other 
sulphur  burns  now  anywhere  in  these  ages,"  sayest  thou?  Well, 
and  if  there  did  not !  Believe  that  there  does  not ;  believe  it  if 
thou  wilt,  nay  hold  by  it  as  a  real  increase,  a  rise  to  higher  stages, 
to  wider  horizons  and  empires.  All  this  has  vanished,  or  has  not 
vanished  ;  believe  as  thou  wilt  as  to  all  this.  But  that  an  Infinite 
of  Practical  Importance,  speaking  with  strict  arithmetical  exact- 
ness, an  Infinite,  has  vanished  or  can  vanish  from  the  Life  of  any 
Man  :  this  thou  shalt  not  believe  !  O  brother,  the  Infinite  of 
Terror,  of  Hope,  of  Pity,  did  it  not  at  any  moment  disclose  itself 
to  thee,  indubitable,  unnameable?  Came  it  never,  like  the  gleam 
of  preternatural  eternal  Oceans,  like  the  voice  of  old  Eternities, 
far-sounding  through  thy  heart  of  hearts?  Never?  Alas,  it  was 
not  thy  Liberalism  then  ;  it  was  thy  Animalism  !  The  Infinite  is 
more  sure  than  any  other  fact.  But  only  men  can  discern  it ; 
mere  building  beavers,  spinning  arachnes,  much  more  the  preda- 
tory vulturous  and  vulpine  species,  do  not  discern  it  well  !  — 

'  The  word  Hell,'  says  Sauerteig,  '  is  still  frequently  in  use 

1  among  the  English  People  :  but  I  could  not  without  difficulty 

'  ascertain  what  they  meant  by  it.     Hell  generally  signifies  the 

1  Infinite  Terror,  the  thing  a  man  is  infinitely  afraid  of,  and  shud- 

13 


146  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

'  ders  and  shrinks  from,  struggling  with  his  whole  soul  to  escape 
1  from  it.  There  is  a  Hell,  therefore,  if  you  will  consider,  which 
'  accompanies  man,  in  all  stages  of  his  history,  and  religious  or 
1  other  development :  but  the  Hells  of  men  and  Peoples  differ 
1  notably.  With  Christians  it  is  the  infinite  terror  of  being  found 
'  guilty  before  the  Just  Judge.  With  old  Romans,  I  conjecture, 
'  it  was  the  terror  not  of  Pluto,  for  whom  probably  they  cared 
1  little,  but  of  doing  unworthily,  doing  unvirtuously,  which  was 
1  their  word  for  un;??  an  fully.  And  now  what  is  it,  if  \ou  pierce 
1  through  his  Cants,  his  oft-repeated  Hearsays,  what  he  calls  his 
1  Worships  and  so  forth,  — what  is  it  that  the  modern  English 
'  soul  does,  in  very  truth,  dread  infinitely,  and  contemplate  with 
'  entire  despair  ?  What  is  his  Hell ;  after  all  these  reputable, 
c  oft-repeated  Hearsays,  what  is  it?  With  hesitation,  with  aston- 
•  ishment,  I  pronounce  it  to  be  :  The  terror  of  "  Not  succeeding  ;" 
'  of  not  making  money,  fame,  or  some  other  figure  in  the  world, 
'  —  chiefly  of  not  making  money  !  Is  not  that  a  somewhat  singu- 
lar Hell?  ' 

Yes,  0  Sauerteig,  it  is  very  singular.  If  we  do  not  '  succeed,' 
where  is  the  use  of  us?  We  had  better  never  have  been  born. 
"Tremble  intensely,"  as  our  friend  the  Emperor  of  China  says; 
there  is  the  black  Bottomless  of  Terror  :  what  Sauerteig  calls  the 
'  Hell  of  the  English  !  '  —  But  indeed  this  Hell  belongs  naturally 
to  the  Gospel  of  Mammonism,  which  also  has  its  corresponding 
Heaven.  For  there  is  one  Reality  among  so  many  Phantasms  ; 
about  one  thing  we  are  entirely  in  earnest :  The  making  of  money. 
Working  Mammonism  does  divide  the  world  with  idle  game-pre- 
serving Dilettantism  :  —  thank  Heaven  that  there  is  even  a  Mam- 
monism, anything  we  are  in  earnest  about !  Idleness  alone  is 
without  hope  :  work  earnestly  at  anything,  you  will  by  degrees 
learn  to  work  at  almost  all  things.  There  is  endless  hope  in 
work,  were  it  even  work  at  making  money. 

True,  it  must  be  owned,  we  for  the  present,  with  our  Mam- 
mon-Gospel, have  come  to  strange  conclusions.  We  call  it  a 
Society  ;  and  go  about  professing  openly  the  totalest  separation, 
isolation.  Our  life  is  not  a  mutual  helpfulness  ;  but  rather,  cloaked 
under  due  laws-of-war,  named  'fair  competition'  and  so  forth,  it 
is  a  mutual  hostility.     We  have  profoundly  forgotten  everywhere 


GOSPEL    OF    MAMMONISH.  147 

that  Cash-payment  is  not  the  sole  relation  of  human  beings  ;  we 
think,  nothing  doubting,  that  it  absolves  and  liquidates  all  en- 
gagements of  man.  "My  starving  workers?"  answers  the  rich 
Mill-owner  :  "  Did  not  I  hire  them  fairly  in  the  market?  Did  I 
not  pay  them,  to  the  last  sixpence,  the  sum  covenanted  for? 
What  have  I  to  do  with  them  more?"  —  Verily  Mammon-wor- 
ship is  a  melancholy  creed.  When  Cain,  for  his  own  behoof, 
had  killed  Abel,  and  was  questioned,  "  Where  is  thy  brother?" 
he  too  made  answer,  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper!"  Did  I  not 
pay  my  brother  his  wages,  the  thing  he  had  merited  from  me. 
'  O  sumptuous  Merchant-Prince,  illustrious  game-preserving 
Duke,  is  there  no  way  of  '  killing  '  thy  brother  but  Cain's  rude 
way  !  '  A  good  man  by  the  very  look  of  him,  by  his  very 
'  presence  with  us  as  a  fellow  wayfarer  in  this  Life -pilgrimage, 
1  promises  so  much  :'  wo  to  him  if  he  forget  all  such  promises,  if 
he  never  know  that  they  were  given  !  To  a  deadened  soul, 
seared  with  the  brute  Idolatry  of  Sense,  to  whom  going  to  Hell 
is  equivalent  to  not  making  money,  all  '  promises,'  and  moral 
duties,  that  cannot  be  pleaded  for  in  Courts  of  Requests,  address 
themselves  in  vain.  Money  he  can  be  ordered  to  pay,  but  nothing 
more.  I  have  not  heard  in  all  Past  History,  and  expect  not  to 
hear  in  all  Future  History,  of  any  Society  anywhere  under  God's 
Heaven  supporting  itself  on  such  Philosophy.  The  Universe  is 
not  made  so  ;  it  is  made  otherwise  than  so.  The  man  or  nation 
of  men  that  thinks  it  is  made  so,  marches  forward  nothing  doubt- 
ing, step  after  step  ;  but  marches  —  whither  we  know  !  In  these 
last  two  centuries  of  Atheistic  Government  (near  two  centuries 
now,  since  the  blessed  restoration  of  his  Sacred  Majesty,  and 
Defender  of  the  Faith,  Charles  Second),  I  reckon  that  we  have 
pretty  well  exhausted  what  of  '  firm  earth '  there  was  for  us  to 
march  on  ;  —  and  are  now,  very  ominously,  shuddering,  reeling, 
and  let  us  hope  trying  to  recoil,  on  the  cliff's  edge  !  — 

For  out  of  this  that  we  call  Atheism  come  so  many  other  isms 
and  falsities,  each  falsity  with  its  misery  at  its  heels  !  —  A  soul 
is  not  like  wind  (spiritus,  or  breath)  contained  within  a  capsule  ; 
the  Almighty  Maker  is  not  like  a  Clockmaker  that  once,  in  old 
immemorial  ages,  having  made  his  Horologe  of  a  Universe,  sits 
ever  since  and  sees  it  go  !     Not  at  all.     Hence  comes  Atheism  ; 


148  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

come,  as  we  say,  many  other  isms ;  and  as  the  sum  of  all,  comes 
Yaletism,  the  reverse  of  Heroism :  sad  root  of  all  woes  what- 
soever. For  indeed,  as  no  man  ever  saw  the  above-said  wind- 
element  enclosed  within  its  capsule,  and  finds  it  at  bottom  more 
deniable  than  conceivable  ;  so  too  he  finds,  in  spite  of  Bridge- 
water  Bequests,  your  Clockmaker  Almighty  an  entirely  question- 
able affair,  a  deniable  affair ;  —  and  accordingly  denies  it,  and 
along  with  it  so  much  else.  Alas,  one  knows  not  what  and 
how  much  else  !  For  the  faith  in  an  Invisible,  Unnameable, 
Godlike,  present  everywhere  in  all  that  we  see  and  work  and 
suffer,  is  the  essence  of  all  faith  whatsoever  ;  and  that  once 
denied,  or  still  worse,  asserted  with  lips  only,  and  out  of  bound 
prayerbooks  only,  what  Other  thing  remains  believable  ?  That 
Cant  well-ordered  is  marketable  Cant ;  that  Heroism  means  gas- 
lighted  Histrionism  ;  that  seen  with  '  clear  eyes '  (as  they  call 
Valet-eyes),  no  man  is  a  Hero,  or  ever  was  a  Hero,  but  all  men 
are  Valets  and  Varlets.  The  accursed  practical  quintessence  of 
all  sorts  of  Unbelief!  For  if  there  be  now  no  Hero,  and  the 
Histrio  himself  begin  to  be  seen  into,  what  hope  is  there  for  the 
seed  of  Adam  here  below  1  We  are  the  doomed  everlasting  prey 
of  the  Quack  ;  who,  now  in  this  guise,  now  in  that,  is  to  filch  us, 
to  pluck  and  eat  us,  by  such  modes  as  are  convenient  for  him. 
For  the  modes  and  guises  I  care  little.  The  Quack  once  inevit- 
able, let  him  come  swiftly,  let  him  pluck  and  eat  me  ;  —  swiftly, 
that  I  may  at  least  have  done  with  him  ;  for  in  his  Quack-world 
I  can  have  no  wish  to  linger.  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I 
despise  him.  Though  he  conquer  nations,  and  have  all  the 
Flunkeys  of  the  Universe  shouting  at  his  heels,  yet  will  I  know 
well  that  he  is  an  Inanity  ;  that  for  him  and  his  there  is  no  con- 
tinuance appointed,  save  only  in  Gehenna  and  the  Pool.  Alas, 
the  Atheist  world,  from  its  utmost  summits  of  Heaven  and  West- 
minster Hall,  downwards  through  poor  seven-feet  Hats  and  '  Un- 
veracities  fallen  hungry,'  down  to  the  lowest  cellars  and  neglected 
hunger-dens  of  it,  is  very  wretched. 

One  of  Dr.  Allison's  Scotch  facts  struck  us  much.*     A  poor 
Irish  Widow,   her  husband  having  died  in  one  of  the  Lanes  of 

*  Observations  on  the  Management  of  the  Poor  in  Scotland  :    By  Wil- 
liam Pulteney  Alison,  M.  D.     (Edinburgh,  1840.) 


GOSPEL    OF    MAMMONISM.  149 

Edinburgh,  went  forth  with  her  three  children,  bare  of  all 
resource,  to  solicit  help  from  the  Charitable  Establishments  of 
that  City.  At  this  Charitable  Establishment  and  then  at  that  she 
was  refused  ;  referred  from  one  to  the  other,  helped  by  none  ;  — 
till  she  had  exhausted  them  all ;  till  her  strength  and  heart  failed 
her  :  she  sank  down  in  typhus  fever  ;  died,  and  infected  her  Lane 
with  fever,  so  that  '  seventeen  other  persons  '  died  of  fever  there 
in  consequence.  The  humane  Physician  asks  thereupon,  as  with 
a  heart  too  full  for  speaking,  Would  it  not  have  been  economy  to 
help  this  poor  Widow'?  She  took  typhus-fever,  and  killed  seven- 
teen of  you! —  Yery  curious.  The  forlorn  Irish  Widow  applies 
to  her  fellow  creatures,  as  if  saying,  "  Behold  I  am  sinking,  bare 
of  help  :  ye  must  help  me  !  I  am  your  sister,  bone  of  your  bone  ; 
one  God  made  us  :  ye  must  help  me!  "  They  answer,  "  No; 
impossible  :  thou  art  no  sister  of  ours."  But  she  proves  her  sis- 
terhood ;  her  typhus-fever  kills  them :  they  actually  were  her 
brothers,  though  denying  it !  Had  man  ever  to  go  lower  for  a 
proof? 

For,  as  indeed  was  very  natural  in  such  case,  all  government  of 
the  Poor  by  the  Rich  has  long  ago  been  given  over  to  Supply- 
and-demand,  Laissez-faire  and  such  like,  and  universally  declared 
to  be  '  impossible.'  "  You  are  no  sister  of  ours  ;  what  shadow  of 
proof  is  there'?  Here  are  our  parchments,  our  padlocks,  proving 
indisputably  our  money-safes  to  be  ours,  and  you  to  have  no  busi- 
ness with  them.  Depart!  It  is  impossible!"  —  Nay,  what 
wouldst  thou  thyself  have  us  do  1  cry  indignant  readers.  No- 
thing, my  friends,  —  till  you  have  got  a  soul  for  yourselves  again. 
Till  then  all  things  are  '  impossible.'  Till  then  I  cannot  even  bid 
you  buy,  as  the  old  Spartans  would  have  done,  two-pence  worth 
of  powder  and  lead,  and  compendiously  shoot  to  death  this  poor 
Irish  Widow  :  even  that  is  '  impossible '  for  you.  Nothing  is 
left  but  that  she  prove  her  sisterhood  by  dying,  and  infecting  you 
with  typhus.  Seventeen  of  you  lying  dead  will  not  deny  such 
proof  that  she  ivas  flesh  of  your  flesh  ;  and  perhaps  some  of  the 
living  may  lay  it  to  heart. 

{ Impossible  :  '  of  a  certain  two-legged  animal  with  feathers,  it 
is  said  if  you   draw  a  distinct  chalk-circle  round  him,  he  sits 
13* 


150  THE     MODERN    WORKER. 

imprisoned,  as  if  girt  with  the  iron  ring  of  Fate ;  and  will  die 
there,  though  within  sight  of  victuals,  —  or  sit  in  sick  misery- 
there,  and  be  fatted  to  death.  The  name  of  this  poor  two-legged 
animal  is  —  Goose  ;  and  they  make  of  him,  when  well  fattened, 
Pate  defoie  gras,  much  prized  by  some  ! 


CHAPTER  in. 


GOSPEL    OF    DILETTANTISM. 


But  after  all,  the  Gospel  of  Dilettantism,  producing  a  Governing 
Class  who  do  not  govern,  nor  understand  in  the  least  that  they  are 
bound  or  expected  to  govern,  is  still  mournfuler  than  that  of  Mam- 
monism.  Mammonism,  as  we  said,  at  least  works ;  this  goes 
idle.  Mammonism  has  seized  some  portion  of  the  message  of 
Nature  to  man  ;  and  seizing  that,  and  following  it,  will  seize  and 
appropriate  more  and  more  of  Nature's  message  :  but  Dilettant- 
ism has  missed  it  wholly.  '  Make  money  :  '  that  will  mean  with- 
al, 'Do  work  in  order  to  make  money.'  But  '  Go  gracefully  idle 
in  Mayfair,'  what  does  or  can  that  mean?  An  idle,  game-pre- 
serving and  even  corn-lawing  Aristocracy,  in  such  an  England  as 
ours  :  has  the  world,  if  we  take  thought  of  it,  ever  seen  such  a 
phenomenon  till  very  lately  1     Can  it  long  continue  to  see  such  1 

Accordingly  the  impotent,  insolent  Donothingism  in  Practice, 
and  Saynothingism  in  Speech,  which  we  have  to  witness  on  that 
side  of  our  affairs,  is  altogether  amazing.  A  Corn-Law  demon- 
strating itself  openly,  for  ten  years  or  more,  with  '  arguments  '  to 
make  the  angels,  and  some  other  classes  of  creatures,  weep  ! 
For  men  are  not  ashamed  to  rise  in  Parliament  and  elsewhere,  and 
speak  the  things  they  do  not  think.  '  Expediency,'  '  Necessities 
of  Party,5  &c.  &c.  !  It  is  not  known  that  the  Tongue  of  Man  is 
a  sacred  organ  ;  that  Man  himself  is  definable  in  Philosophy  as  an 
'  Incarnate  Word;  the  Word  not  there,  you  have  no  Man  there 
either,  but  a  Phantasm  instead  !  In  this  way  it  is  that  Absurdi- 
ties may  live  long  enough,  —  still  walking,  and  talking  for  them- 
selves, years  and  decades  after  the  brains  are  quite  out !  How 
are  '  the  knaves  and  dastards '  ever  to  be  got  '  arrested '  at  that 
rate !  — 


152  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

"  No  man  in  this  fashionable  London  of  yours,"  friend  Sauer- 
teig  would  say,  "  speaks  a  plain  word  to  me.  Every  man  feels 
bound  to  be  something  more  than  plain  ;  to  be  pungent  withal, 
witty,  ornamental.  His  poor  fraction  of  sense  has  to  be  perked 
into  some  epigrammatic  shape,  that  it  may  prick  into  me  ;  — per- 
haps (this  is  the  commonest)  to  be  topsyturvied,  left  standing  on 
its  head,  that  I  may  remember  it  the  better !  Such  grinning  in- 
anity is  very  sad  to  the  soul  of  man.  Human  faces  should  not 
grin  on  one  like  masks ;  they  should  look  on  one  like  faces  !  I 
love  honest  laughter  as  I  do  sunlight ;  but  not  dishonest :  most 
kinds  of  dancing  too  ;  but  the  St. -Vitus  kind  not  at  all !  A  fash- 
ionable wit,  ach  Himmel,  if  you  ask,  Which,  he  or  a  Death's- 
head,  will  be  the  cheerier  company  for  me  ?  pray  send  not 
him!" 

Insincere  Speech,  truly,  is  the  prime  material  of  insincere  Ac- 
tion. Action  hangs,  as  it  were,  dissolved  in  Speech,  in  Thought 
whereof  Speech  is  the  shadow  ;  and  precipitates  itself  therefrom. 
The  kind  of  Speech  in  a  man  betokens  the  kind  of  Action  you 
will  get  from  him.  Our  Speech,  in  these  modern  days,  has  be- 
come amazing.  Johnson  complained,  "  Nobody  speaks  in  earnest, 
Sir;  there  is  no  serious  conversation."  To  us  all  serious  speech 
of  men,  as  that  of  Seventeenth-Century  Puritans,  Twelfth-Cen- 
tury Catholics,  German  Poets  of  this  Century,  has  become  jargon, 
more  or  less  insane.  Cromwell  was  mad  and  a  quack  ;  Anselm, 
Becket,  Goethe,  ditto  ditto. 

Perhaps  few  narratives  in  History  or  Mythology  are  more  sig- 
nificant than  that  Moslem  one,  of  Moses  and  the  Dwellers  by  the 
Dead  Sea.  A  tribe  of  men  dwelt  on  the  shores  of  that  same 
Asphaltic  Lake  ;  and  having  forgotten,  as  we  are  all  too  prone  to 
do,  the  inner  facts  of  Nature,  and  taken  up  with  the  falsities  and 
outer  semblances  of  it,  were  fallen  into  sad  conditions,  —  verging 
indeed  towards  a  certain  far  deeper  Lake.  Whereupon  it  pleased 
kind  Heaven  to  send  them  the  Prophet  Moses,  with  an  instructive 
word  of  warning,  out  of  which  might  have  sprung  '  remedial 
measures '  not  a  few  But  no :  the  men  of  the  Dead  Sea  dis- 
covered, as  the  valet-species  always  does  in  heroes  or  prophets, 
no  comeliness  in  Moses  ;  listened  with  real  tedium  to  Moses,  with 


GOSPEL    OF    DILETTANTISM.  153 

light  grinning,  or  with  splenetic  sniffs  and  sneers,  affecting  even 
to  yawn  ;  and  signified,  in  short,  that  they  found  him  a  humbug, 
and  even  a  bore.  Such  was  the  candid  theory  these  men  of  the 
Asphalt  Lake  formed  to  themselves  of  Moses,  That  probably  he 
was  a  humbug,  that  certainly  he  was  a  bore. 

Moses  withdrew ;  but  Nature  and  her  rigorous  veracities  did 
not  withdraw.  The  men  of  the  Dead  Sea,  when  we  next  went 
to  visit  them,  were  all  '  changed  into  Apes  ;'  *  sitting  on  the  trees 
there,  grinning  now  in  the  most  wnaffected  manner ;  gibbering 
and  chattering  complete  nonsense ;  finding  the  whole  Universe 
now  a  most  indisputable  Humbug  !  The  Universe  has  become  a 
Humbug  to  these  Apes  who  thought  it  one  !  There  they  sit  and 
chatter,  to  this  hour :  only,  I  think,  every  Sabbath  there  returns 
to  them  a  bewildered  half-consciousness,  half-reminiscence  ;  and 
they  sit,  with  their  wizzened  smoke-dried  visages,  and  such  an 
air  of  supreme  tragicality  as  Apes  may  ;  looking  out,  through 
those  blinking  smoke-bleared  eyes  of  theirs,  into  the  wonderfulest 
universal  smoky  Twilight  and  undecipherable  disordered  Dusk  of 
Things ;  wholly  an  Uncertainty,  Unintelligibility,  they  and  it ; 
and  for  commentary  thereon,  here  and  there  an  unmusical  chatter 
or  mew  :  —  truest,  tragicalest  Humbug  conceivable  by  the  mind 
of  man  or  ape  !  They  made  no  use  of  their  souls  ;  and  so  have 
lost  them.  Their  worship  on  the  Sabbath  now  is  to  roost  there, 
with  unmusical  screeches,  and  half-remember  that  they  had 
souls. 

Didst  thou  never,  0  Traveller,  fall  in  with  parties  of  this  tribe  ? 
Meseems  they  are  grown  somewhat  numerous  in  our  day. 

*  Sale's  Koran  {Introduction). 


CHAPTER   IV. 


All  work,  even  cotton-spinning,  is  noble  ;  work  is  alone  noble  : 
be  that  here  said  and  asserted  once  more.  And  in  like  manner 
too  all  dignity  is  painful ;  a  life  of  ease  is  not  for  any  man,  nor  for 
any  god.  The  life  of  all  gods  figures  itself  to  us  as  a  Sublime 
Sadness  —  earnestness  of  Infinite  Battle  against  Infinite  Labour. 
Our  highest  religion  is  named  the  '  Worship  of  Sorrow.'  For 
the  son  of  man  there  is  no  noble  crown,  well  worn,  or  even  ill 
worn,  but  is  a  crown  of  thorns  !  —  These  things,  in  spoken  words, 
or  still  better,  in  felt  instincts  alive  in  every  heart,  were  once  well 
known. 

Does  not  the  whole  wretchedness,  the  whole  Atheism  as  I  call 
it,  of  man's  ways,  in  these  generations,  shadow  itself  for  us  in 
that  unspeakable  Life-philosophy  of  his  :  The  pretension  to  be 
what  he  calls  '  happy  ?  '  Every  pitifulest  whipster  that  walks 
within  a  skin  has  his  head  filled  with  the  notion  that  he  is,  shall 
be,  or  by  all  human  and  divine  laws  ought  to  be,  '  happy.'  His 
wishes,  the  pitifulest  whipster's,  are  to  be  fulfilled  for  him ;  his 
days,  the  pitifulest  whipster's,  are  to  flow  on  in  ever-gentle  current 
of  enjoyment,  impossible  even  for  the  gods.  The  prophets  preach 
to  us,  Thou  shalt  be  happy  ;  thou  shalt  love  pleasant  things,  and 
find  them.  The  people  clamour,  Why  have  we  not  found  pleas- 
ant things  1 

We  construct  our  theory  of  Human  Duties,  not  on  any  Great- 
est-Nobleness Principle,  never  so  mistaken  ;  no,  but  on  a  Great- 
est-Happiness Principle.  '  The  word  Soul  with  us,  as  in  some 
Slavonic  dialects,  seems  to  be  synonymous  with  Stomach.''  We 
plead  and  speak,  in  our  Parliaments  and  elsewhere,  not  as  from 
the   Soul,  but  from  the   Stomach  ;  —  wherefore,   indeed,   our 


HAPPY.  155 

pleadings  are  so  slow  to  profit.  We  plead  not  for  God's  Justice  ; 
we  are  not  ashamed  to  stand  clamouring  and  pleading  for  our  own 
*  interests,'  our  own  rents  and  trade-profits  ;  we  say,  They  are  the 
'  interests  '  of  so  many  ;  there  is  such  an  intense  desire  for  them 
in  us  !  We  demand  Free-Trade,  with  much  just  vociferation  and 
benevolence,  That  the  poorer  classes,  who  are  terribly  ill-ofF  at 
present,  may  have  cheaper  New-Orleans  bacon.  Men  ask  on 
Free-trade  platforms,  How  can  the  indomitable  spirit  of  English- 
men be  kept  up  without  plenty  of  bacon  ?  We  shall  become  a 
ruined  Nation  !  —  Surely,  my  friends,  plenty  of  bacon  is  good  and 
indispensable  :  but,  I  doubt,  you  will  never  get  even  bacon  by 
aiming  only  at  that.  You  are  men,  not  animals  of  prey,  well  used 
or  ill-used  !  Your  Greatest-Happiness  Principle  seems  to  me  fast 
becoming  a  rather  unhappy  one.  — What  if  we  should  cease  bab- 
bling about  '  happiness,'  and  leave  it  resting  on  its  own  basis,  as 
it  used  to  do  ! 

A  gifted  Byron  rises  in  his  wrath  ;  and  feeling  too  surely  that 
he  for  his  part  is  not  *  happy,'  declares  the  same  in  very  violent 
language,  as  a  piece  of  news  that  may  be  interesting.  It  evidently 
has  surprised  him  much.  One  dislikes  to  see  a  man  and  poet  re- 
duced to  proclaim  on  the  streets  such  tidings  :  but  on  the  whole, 
as  matters  go,  that  is  not  the  most  dislikable.  Byron  speaks  the 
truth  in  this  matter.  Byron's  large  audience  indicates  how  true 
it  is  felt  to  be. 

'Happy,'  my  brother?  First  of  all,  what  difference  is  it 
whether  thou  art  happy  or  not !  Today  becomes  Yesterday  so 
fast,  all  Tomorrows  become  Yesterdays  ;  and  then  there  is  no 
question  whatever  of  the  '  happiness,'  but  quite  another  question. 
Nay,  thou  hast  such  a  sacred  pity  left  at  least  for  thyself,  thy 
very  pains  once  gone  over  into  Yesterday  become  joys  to  thee. 
Besides,  thou  knowest  not  what  heavenly  blessedness  and  indis- 
pensable sanative  virtue  was  in  them ;  thou  shalt  only  know  it 
after  many  days,  when  thou  art  wiser  !  —  A  benevolent  old  Sur- 
geon sat  once  in  our  company,  with  a  Patient  fallen  sick  by  gour- 
mandising,  whom  he  had  just,  too  briefly  in  the  Patient's  judg- 
ment, been  examining.  The  foolish  Patient  still  at  intervals  con- 
tinued to  break  in  on  our  discourse,  which  rather  promised  to  take 
a  philosophic  turn:   "But  I  have  lost  my  appetite,"  said  he, 


156  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

objurgatively,  with  a  tone  of  irritated  pathos  ;  "I  have  no  appe- 
tite ;  I  can't  eat!  "  —  "  My  dear  fellow,"  answered  the  Doctor 
in  mildest  tone,  "  it  isn't  of  the  slightest  consequence  ;  "  —  and 
continued  his  philosophical  discoursings  with  us  ! 

Or  does  the  reader  not  know  the  history  of  that  Scottish  iron 
Misanthrope  1  The  inmates  of  some  town-mansion,  in  those 
Northern  parts,  were  thrown  into  the  fearfulest  alarm  by  indu- 
bitable symptoms  of  a  ghost  inhabiting  the  next  house,  or  per- 
haps even  the  partition-wall !  Ever  at  a  certain  hour,  with  pre- 
ternatural gnarring,  growling  and  screeching,  which  attended  as 
running  bass,  there  began,  in  a  horrid,  semi-articulate,  unearthly 
voice,  this  song  :  "  Once  I  was  hap-hap-happy,  but  now  I'm 
miserable  !  Clack-clack-clack,  gnarr-r-r,  whuz-z  :  Once  I  was 
hap-hap-happy,  but  now  I'm  mees-erable !  "  —  Rest,  rest,  per- 
turbed spirit ;  —  or  indeed,  as  the  good  old  Doctor  said  :  My  dear 
fellow,  it  isn't  of  the  slighest  consequence  !  But  no  ;  the  per- 
turbed spirit  could  not  rest;  and  to  the  neighbours,  fretted, 
affrighted,  or  at  least  insufferably  bored  by  him,  it  icas  of  such 
consequence  that  they  had  to  go  and  examine  in  his  haunted 
chamber.  In  his  haunted  chamber,  they  find  that  the  perturbed 
spirit  is  an  unfortunate  —  Imitator  of  Byron?  No,  is  an  unfor- 
tunate rusty  Meatjack,  gnarring  and  creaking  with  rust  and  work  ; 
and  this,  in  Scottish  dialect,  is  its  Byronian  musical  Life-philoso- 
phy, sung  according  to  ability  ! 

Truly,  I  think  the  man  who  goes  about  pothering  and  uproar- 
ing  for  his  '  happiness,' —  pothering,  and  were  it  ballot-boxing, 
poem-making,  or  in  what  way  soever  fussing  and  exerting  him- 
self,—  he  is  not  the  man  that  will  help  to  '  get  our  knaves  and 
dastards  arrested  !  '  No  ;  he  rather  is  on  the  way  to  increase  the 
number,  —  by  at  least  one  unit  and  his  tail !  Observe,  too,  that 
this  is  all  a  modern  affair  ;  belongs  not  to  the  old  heroic  times, 
but  to  these  dastard  new  times.  '  Happiness  our  being's  end  and 
aim '  is  at  bottom,  if  we  will  count  well,  not  yet  two  centuries 
old  in  the  world. 

The  only  happiness  a  brave  man  ever  troubled  himself  with 
asking  much  about  was,  happiness  enough  to  get  his  work  done. 
Not  "  I  can't  eat !  "   but  "  I  can't  work  !  ?'    that  was  the  burden 


HAPPY.  157 

of  all  wise  complaining  among  men.  It  is,  after  all,  the  one  un- 
happiness  of  a  man.  That  he  cannot  work  ;  that  he  cannot  get 
his  destiny  as  a  man  fulfilled.  Behold,  the  day  is  passing  swiftly 
over,  our  life  is  passing  swiftly  over  ;  and  the  night  cometh, 
wherein  no  man  can  work.  The  night  once  come,  our  happiness, 
our  unhappiness, — it  is  all  abolished  ;  vanished,  clean  gone  ;  a 
thing  that  has  been  :  '  not  of  the  slightest  consequence  '  whether 
we  were  happy  as  eupeptic  Curtis,  as  the  fattest  pig  of  Epicurus, 
or  unhappy  as  Job  with  potsherds,  as  musical  Byron  with  Giaours 
and  sensibilities  of  the  heart ;  as  the  unmusical  Meat-jack  with 
hard  labour  and  rust  ?  But  our  work,  — behold  that  is  not  abol- 
ished, that  has  not  vanished  :  our  work,  behold,  it  remains,  or 
the  want  of  it  remains  ;  —  for  endless  Times  and  Eternities,  re- 
mains ;  and  that  is  now  the  sole  question  with  us  forevermore  ! 
Brief  brawling  Day,  with  its  noisy  phantasms,  its  poor  paper- 
crowns  tinsel-gilt,  is  gone  ;  and  divine  everlasting  Night,  with 
her  star-diadems,  with  her  silences  and  her  veracities,  is  come ! 
What  hast  thou  done,  and  how  ?  Happiness,  unhappiness  :  all 
that  was  but  the  wages  thou  hadst ;  thou  hast  spent  all  that,  in 
sustaining  thyself  hitherward ;  not  a  coin  of  it  remains  with  thee, 
it  is  all  spent,  eaten:  and  now  thy  work,  where  is  thy  work? 
Swift,  out  with  it,  let  us  see  thy  work ! 

Of  a  truth,  if  man  were  not  a  poor  hungry  dastard,  and  even 
much  of  a  blockhead  withal,  he  would  cease  criticising  his  victuals 
to  such  extent ;  and  criticise  himself  rather,  what  he  does  with  his 
victuals ! 


14 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE    ENGLISH. 


And  yet,  with  all  thy  theoretic  platitudes,  what  a  depth  of  prac- 
tical sense  in  thee,  great  England  !  A  depth  of  sense,  of  justice, 
and  courage  ;  in  which,  under  all  emergencies  and  world-bewilder- 
ments, and  under  this  most  complex  of  emergencies  we  now  live 
in,  there  is  still  hope,  there  is  still  assurance  ! 

The  English  are  a  dumb  people.  They  can  do  great  acts,  but 
not  describe  them.  Like  the  old  Romans,  and  some  few  others, 
their  Epic  Poem  is  written  on  the  Earth's  surface  :  England  her 
Mark  !  It  is  complained  that  they  have  no  artists  :  one  Shaks- 
peare  indeed  ;  but  for  Raphael  only  a  Reynolds ;  for  Mozart 
nothing  but  a  Mr.  Bishop  :  not  a  picture,  not  a  song.  And  yet 
they  did  produce  one  Shakspeare  :  consider  how  the  element  of 
Shakspearean  melody  does  lie  imprisoned  in  their  nature  ;  re- 
duced to  unfold  itself  in  mere  Cotton-mills,  Constitutional  Govern- 
ments, and  such  like; — all  the  more  interesting  when  it  does 
become  visible,  as  even  in  such  unexpected  shapes  it  succeeds  in 
doing  !  Goethe  spoke  of  the  Horse,  how  impressive,  almost  af- 
fecting it  was  that  an  animal  of  such  qualities  should  stand  ob- 
structed so  ;  its  speech  nothing  but  an  inarticulate  neighing,  its 
handinessmere  hoof  'iness,  the  fingers  all  constricted,  tied  together, 
the  finger-nails  coagulated  into  a  mere  hoof,  shod  with  iron.  The 
more  significant,  thinks  he,  are  those  eye-flashings  of  the  generous 
noble  quadruped  ;  those  prancings,  curvings  of  the  neck  clothed 
with  thunder. 

A  Dog  of  Knowledge  has  free  utterance  ;  but  the  Warhorse  is 
almost  mute,  very  far  from  free  !  It  is  even  so.  Truly,  your 
freest  utterances  are  not  by  any  means  always  the  best :  they  are 
the  worst  rather  ;  the  feeblest,  trivialest .;  their  meaning  prompt, 


THE    ENGLISH.  159 

but  small,  ephemeral.  Commend  me  to  the  silent  English,  to  the 
silent  Romans.  Nay,  the  silent  Russians  too  I  believe  to  be 
worth  something  :  are  they  not  even  now  drilling,  under  much 
obloquy,  an  immense  semi-barbarous  half- world  from  Finland  to 
Kamtschatka,  into  rule,  subordination,  civilisation,  —  really  in  an 
old  Roman  fashion  ;  speaking  no  word  about  it ;  quietly  hearing 
all  manner  of  vituperative  Able  Editors  speak  !  While  your 
ever-talking,  ever-gesticulating  French,  for  example,  what  are 
they  at  this  moment  drilling  1  —  Nay,  of  all  animals,  the  freest  of 
utterance,  I  should  judge,  is  the  genus  Simla :  go  into  the  Indian 
woods,  say  all  Travellers,  and  look  what  a  brisk,  adroit,  unrest- 
ing Ape-population  it  is  ! 

The  spoken  "Word,  the  written  Poem,  is  said  to  be  an  epitome 
of  the  man  ;  how  much  more  the  done  Work.  Whatsoever  of 
morality  and  of  intelligence  ;  what  of  patience,  perseverance, 
faithfulness,  of  method,  insight,  ingenuity,  energy ;  in  a  word, 
whatsoever  of  Strength  the  man  had  in  him  will  lie  written  in  the 
Work  he  does.  To  work  :  why,  it  is  to  try  himself  against  Na- 
ture, and  her  everlasting  unerring  Laws  :  these  will  tell  a  true 
verdict  as  to  the  man.  So  much  of  virtue  and  of  faculty  did  we 
find  in  him ;  so  much  and  no  more  !  He  had  such  capacity  of 
harmonising  himself  with  me  and  my  unalterable  ever-veracious 
Laws  ;  of  cooperating  and  working  as  I  bade  him  ;  —  and  has 
prospered,  and  has  not  prospered,  as  you  see  !  —  Working  as 
great  Nature  bade  him  :  does  not  that  mean  virtue  of  a  kind  ; 
nay,  of  all  kinds'?  Cotton  can  be  spun  and  sold,  Lancashire  ope- 
ratives can  be  got  to  spin  it,  and  at  length  one  has  the  woven 
webs  and  sells  them,  by  following  Nature's  regulations  in  that 
matter  :  by  not  following  Nature's  regulations,  you  have  them 
not.  You  have  them  not ;  — there  is  no  Cotton-web  to  sell :  Na- 
ture finds  a  bill  against  you ;  your  '  Strength '  is  not  Strength, 
but  Futility  !  Let  faculty  be  honoured,  so  far  as  it  is  faculty.  A 
man  that  can  succeed  in  working  is  to  me  always  a  man. 

How  one  loves  to  see  the  burly  figure  of  him,  this  thick-skinned, 
seemingly  opaque,  perhaps  sulky,  almost  stupid  Man  of  Practice, 
pitted  against  some  light  adroit  Man  of  Theory,  all  equipt  with 
clear  logic,  and  able  anywhere  to  give  you  Why  for  Wherefore  ! 


160  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

The  adroit  Man  of  Theory,  so  light  of  movement,  clear  of  utter- 
ance, with  his  bow  full-bent  and  quiver  full  of  arrow-arguments, 
—  surely  he  will  strike  down  the  game,  transfix  everywhere  the 
heart  of  the  matter  ;  triumph  everywhere,  as  he  proves  that  he 
shall  and  must  do  !  To  your  astonishment,  it  turns  out  oftenest 
No.  The  cloudy-browed,  thick-soled,  opaque  Practicality,  with 
no  logic-utterance,  in  silence  mainly,  with  here  and  there  a  low 
grunt  or  growl,  has  in  him  what  transcends  all  logic  utterance  :  a 
Congruity  with  the  Unuttered  !  The  Speakable,  which  lies  atop, 
as  a  superficial  film,  or  outer  skin,  is  his  or  is  not  his  :  but  the 
Doable,  which  reaches  down  to  the  World's  centre,  you  find  him 
there  ! 

The  rugged  Brindley  has  little  to  say  for  himself ;  the  rugged 
Brindley,  when  difficulties  accumulate  on  him,  retires  silent, 
1  generally  to  his  bed ;'  retires  '  sometimes  for  three  days  together 
to  his  bed,  that  he  may  be  in  perfect  privacy  there,'  and  ascertain 
in  his  rough  head  how  the  difficulties  can  be  overcome.  The  in- 
eloquent  Brindley,  behold  he  has  chained  seas  together;  his  ships 
do  visibly  float  over  valleys,  invisibly  through  the  hearts  of  moun- 
tains ;  the  Mersey  and  the  Thames,  the  Humber  and  the  Severn 
have  shaken  hands  :  Nature  most  audibly  answers,  Yea  !  The 
man  of  Theory  twangs  his  full-bent  bow  :  Nature's  Fact  ought  to 
fall  stricken,  but  does  not :  his  logic-arrow  glances  from  it  as 
from  a  scaly  dragon,  and  the  obstinate  Fact  keeps  walking  its 
way.  How  singular  !  At  bottom,  you  will  have  to  grapple  closer 
with  the  dragon  ;  take  it  home  to  you,  by  real  faculty,  not  by 
seeming  faculty  ;  try  whether  you  are  stronger  or  it  is  stronger. 
Close  with  it,  wrestle  it :  sheer  obstinate  toughness  of  muscle  ; 
but  much  more,  what  we  call  toughness  of  heart,  which  will  mean 
persistance  hopeful  and  even  desperate,  unsubduable  patience, 
composed  candid  openness,  clearness  of  mind  :  all  this  shall  be 
'  strength '  in  wrestling  your  dragon ;  the  whole  man's  real 
strength  is  in  this  work,  we  shall  get  the  measure  of  him  here. 

Of  all  the  Nations  in  the  world  at  present  we  English  are  the 
stupidest  in  speech,  the  wisest  in  action.  As  good  as  a  '  dumb  ' 
Nation,  I  say,  who  cannot  speak,  and  have  never  yet  spoken, — 
spite  of  the  Shakspeares  and  Miltons  who  shew  us  what  possibil- 
ities there  are  !  —  O  Mr.   Bull,  I  look  in  that  surly  face  of  thine 


THE    ENGLISH.  161 

with  a  mixture  of  pity  and  laughter,  yet  also  with  wonder  and 
veneration.  Thou  complainest  not,  my  illustrious  friend  ;  and  yet 
I  believe  the  heart  of  thee  is  full  of  sorrow,  of  unspoken  sadness, 
seriousness,  —  profound  melancholy  (as  some  have  said)  the  basis 
of  thy  being.  Unconsciously,  for  thou  speakest  of  nothing,  this 
great  Universe  is  great  to  thee.  Not  by  levity  of  floating,  but  by 
stubborn  force  of  swimming,  shalt  thou  make  thy  way.  The 
Fates  sing  of  thee  that  thou  shalt  many  times  be  thought  an  ass 
and  a  dull  ox,  and  shalt  with  a  godlike  indifference  believe  it. 
My  friend,  —  and  it  is  all  untrue,  nothing  ever  falser  in  point  of 
fact !  Thou  art  of  those  great  ones  whose  greatness  the  small 
passer-by  does  not  discern.  Thy  very  stupidity  is  wiser  than 
their  wisdom.  A  grand  vis  inertia,  is  in  thee  ;  how  many  grand 
qualities  unknown  to  small  men  !  Nature  alone  knows  thee,  ac- 
knowledges the  bulk  and  strength  of  thee  :  thy  Epic,  unsung  in 
words,  is  written  in  huge  characters  on  the  face  of  this  Planet,  — 
sea-moles,  cotton-trades,  railways,  fleets  and  cities,  Indian  Em- 
pires,  Americas,   New-Hollands  ;   legible  throughout   the  Solar 


ei;< 


Systi 

But  the  dumb  Russians  too,  as  I  said,  they,  drilling  all  wild 
Asia  and  wild  Europe  into  military  rank  and  file,  a  terrible  yet 
hitherto  a  prospering  enterprise,  are  still  dumber.  The  old  Ro- 
mans also  could  not  sp  ak,  for  many  centuries  :  —  not  till  the 
world  was  theirs  ;  and  so  many  speaking  Greekdoms,  their  logic- 
arrows  all  spent,  had  been  absorbed  and  abolished.  The  logic- 
arrows,  how  they  glanced  futile  from  obdurate  thick-skinned 
Facts ;  Facts  to  be  wrestled  down  only  by  the  real  vigour  of  Ro- 
man thews  !  — As  for  me,  I  honour,  in  these  loud-babbling  days, 
all  the  Silent  rather.  A  grand  Silence  that  of  Romans  ;  —  nay 
the  grandest  of  all,  is  it  not  that  of  the  gods  !  Even  Triviality, 
Imbecility,  that  can  sit  silent,  how  respectable  is  it  in  comparison  ! 
The  '  talent  of  silence  '  is  our  fundamental  one.  Great  honour  to 
him  whose  Epic  is  a  melodious  hexameter  Iliad  ;  not  a  jingling 
Sham-Iliad,  nothing  true  in  it  but  the  hexameters  and  forms 
merely.  But  still  greater  honour,  if  his  Epic  be  a  mighty  Empire 
slowly  built  together,  a  mighty  Series  of  Heroic  Deeds,  —  a 
mighty  Conquest  over  Chaos ;  which  Epic  the  '  Eternal  Melodies  ' 
have,  and  must  have,  informed   and  dwelt  in,  as  it  sung  itself! 

14* 


162  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

There  is  no  mistaking  that  latter  Epic.  Deeds  are  greater  than 
Words.  Deeds  have  such  a  life,  mute  but  undeniable,  and  grow 
as  living  trees  and  fruit-trees  do ;  they  people  the  vacuity  of  Time, 
and  make  it  green  and  worthy.  Why  should  the  oak  prove  logi- 
cally that  it  ought  to  grow,  and  will  grow  1  Plant  it,  try  it  ; 
what  gifts  of  diligent  judicious  assimilation  and  secretion  it  has,  of 
progress  and  resistance,  of  force  to  grow,  will  then  declare  them- 
selves. My  much-honoured,  illustrious,  extremely  inarticulate 
Mr.  Bull!  — 

Ask  Bull  his  spoken  opinion  of  any  matter,  —  oftentimes  the 
force  of  dulness  can  no  farther  go.  You  stand  silent,  incredulous, 
as  over  a  platitude  that  borders  on  the  Infinite.  The  man's 
Churchisms,  Dissenterisms,  Puseyisms,  Benthamisms,  College 
Philosophies,  Fashionable  Literatures,  are  unexampled  in  this 
world.  Fate's  prophecy  is  fulfilled  ;  you  call  the  man  an  ox  and 
an  ass.  But  set  him  once  to  work,  —  respectable  man  !  His 
spoken  sense  is  next  to  nothing,  nine-tenths  of  it  palpable  non- 
sense ;  but  his  unspoken  sense,  his  inner  silent  feeling  of  what  is 
true,  what  does  agree  with  fact,  what  is  doable  and  what  is  not 
doable,  —  this  seeks  its  fellow  in  the  world.  A  terrible  worker  ; 
irresistible  against  marshes,  mountains,  impediments,  disorder, 
incivilisation  ;  everywhere  vanquishing  disorder,  leaving  it  behind 
him  as  method  and  order.  He  '  retires  to  his  bed  three  days,' 
and  considers  ! 

Nay  withal,  stupid  as  he  is,  our  dear  John,  —  ever,  after  infi- 
nite tumblings,  and  spoken  platitudes  innumerable  from  barrel- 
heads and  parliament-benches,  he  does  settle  down  somewhere 
about  the  just  conclusion  ;  you  are  certain  that  his  jumblings  and 
tumblings  will  end,  after  years  or  centuries,  in  the  stable  equili- 
brium. Stable  equilibrium,  I  say ;  centre-of-gravity  lowest ;  — 
not  the  unstable,  with  centre-of-gravity  highest,  as  I  have  known 
it  done  by  quicker  people  !  For  indeed,  do  but  jumble  and  tum- 
ble sufficiently,  you  avoid  that  worst  fault,  of  settling  with  your 
centre-of-gravity  highest ;  your  centre-of-gravity  is  certain  to 
come  lowest,  and  to  stay  there.  If  slowness,  what  we  in  our 
impatience  call  '  stupidity,'  be  the  price  of  stable  equilibrium 
over  unstable,  shall  we  grudge  a  little  slowness  ?  Not  the  least 
admirable  quality  of  Bull  is,  after  all,  that  of  remaining  insensible 


THE    ENGLISH.  163 

to  logic  ;  holding  out  for  considerable  periods,  ten  years  or  more, 
as  in  this  of  the  Corn-Laws,  after  all  arguments  and  shadow  of 
arguments  have  faded  away  from  him,  till  the  very  urchins  on  the 
street  titter  at  the  arguments  he  brings.  Logic,  —  Aoyixrjy  the 
'  Art  of  Speech,'  —  does  indeed  speak  so  and  so  :  clear  enough  : 
nevertheless  Bull  still  shakes  his  head  ;  will  see  whether  nothing 
else  illogical,  not  yet  '  spoken,'  not  yet  able  to  be  '  spoken,'  do 
not  lie  in  the  business,  as  there  so  often  does  !  —  My  firm  belief 
is,  that,  finding  himself  now  enchanted,  hand-shackled,  foot- 
shackled,  in  Poor-Law  Bastilles  and  elsewhere,  he  will  retire 
three  days  to  his  bed,  and  arrive  at  a  conclusion  or  two  !  His 
three-years  '  total  stagnation  of  trade,'  alas,  is  not  that  a  painful 
enough  '  lying  in  bed  to  consider  himself? '     Poor  Bull ! 

Bull  is  a  born  Conservative  ;  for  this  too  I  inexpressibly  honour 
him.  All  great  Peoples  are  conservative  ;  slow  to  believe  in  nov- 
elties ;  patient  of  much  error  in  actualities  ;  deeply  and  forever 
certain  of  the  greatness  that  is  in  Law,  in  Custom  once  solemnly- 
established,  and  now  long  recognised  as  just  and  final.  —  True,  O 
Radical  Reformer,  there  is  no  Custom  that  can,  properly  speak- 
ing, be  final ;  none.  And  yet  thou  seest  Customs  which,  in  all 
civilised  countries,  are  accounted  final ;  nay,  under  the  Old-Roman 
name  of  Mores,  are  accounted  Morality,  Virtue,  Laws  of  God 
Himself.  Such,  I  assure  thee,  not  a  few  of  them  are  ;  such  al- 
most all  of  them  once  were.  And  greatly  do  I  respect  the  solid 
character,  —  a  blockhead,  thou  wilt  say;  yes,  but  a  well-condi- 
tioned blockhead,  and  the  best-condition,  —  who  esteems  all '  Cus- 
toms once  solemnly  acknowledged '  to  be  ultimate,  divine,  and 
the  rule  for  a  man  to  walk  by,  nothing  doubting,  not  inquiring 
farther.  What  a  time  of  it  had  we,  were  all  men's  life  and  trade 
still,  in  all  parts  of  it,  a  problem,  a  hypothetic  seeking,  to  be  set- 
tled by  painful  Logics  and  Baconian  Inductions  !  The  Clerk  in 
Eastcheap  cannot  spend  the  day  in  verifying  his  Ready-Reckoner  ; 
he  must  take  it  as  verified,  true  and  indisputable  ;  or  his  Book- 
keeping by  Double  Entry  will  stand  still.  "  Where  is  your 
Posted  Ledger?"  asks  the  Master  at  night.  —  "Sir,"  answers 
the  other,  "  I  was  verifying  my  Ready-Reckoner,  and  find  some 
errors.     The  Ledger  is —  !  "  —  Fancy  such  a  thing  ! 

True,  all  turns  on  your  Ready-Reckoner  being  moderately  cor- 


164  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

rect,  —  being  not  insupportably  incorrect !  A  Ready-Reckoner 
which  has  led  to  distinct  entries  in  your  Ledger  such  as  these  : 
'  Creditor  an  English  People  by  fifteen  hundred  years  of  good 
'  Labour  ;  and  Debtor  to  lodging  in  enchanted  Poor-Law  Bastilles  : 
'  Creditor  by  conquering  the  largest  Empire  the  Sun  ever  saw  ; 
'  and  Debtor  to  Donothingism  and  ' '  Impossible ' '  written  on  all 
'  departments  of  the  government  thereof :  Creditor  by  mountains 
'  of  gold  ingots  earned  ;  and  Debtor  to  No  Bread  purchasable  by 
'  them  : '  —  such  Ready-Reckoner,  methinks,  is  beginning  to  be 
suspect;  nay  is  ceasing,  and  has  ceased  to  be  suspect!  Such 
Ready-Reckoner  is  a  Solecism  in  Eastcheap  ;  and  must,  whatever 
be  the  press  of  business,  and  will  and  shall  be  rectified  a  little. 
Business  can  go  on  no  longer  with  it.  The  most  Conservative 
English  People,  thickest-skinned,  most  patient  of  Peoples,  is 
driven  alike  by  its  Logic  and  its  Unlogic,  by  things  '  spoken,'  and 
by  things  not  yet  spoken  or  very  speakable,  but  only  felt  and  very 
unendurable,  to  be  wholly  a  Reforming  People.  Their  Life  as  it 
is  has  ceased  to  be  longer  possible  for  them. 

Urge  not  this  noble  silent  People  ;  rouse  not  the  Berserkir-rage 
that  lies  in  them  !  Do  you  know  their  Cromwells,  Hampdens, 
their  Pyms  and  Bradshaws  1  Men  very  peaceable,  but  men  that 
can  be  made  very  terrible  !  Men  who,  like  their  old  Teutsch 
Fathers  in  Agrippa's  days,  '  have  a  soul  that  despises  death  ; '  to 
whom  '  death,'  compared  with  falsehoods  and  injustices,  is  light ; 
— '  in  whom  there  is  a  rage  unconquerable  by  the  immortal 
gods  !  '  Before  this,  the  English  People  have  taken  very  preter- 
natural-looking Spectres  by  the  beard;  saying  virtually  :  "And 
if  thou  wert  '  preternatural  1  '  Thou  with  thy  '  divine-rights  ' 
grown  diabolic  wrongs  ?     Thou,  — not  even  '  natural ; '  decapita- 

ble  ;  totally  extinguishable  !  " Yes,  just  so  godlike  as  this 

People's  patience  was,  even  so  godlike  will  and  must  its  impa- 
tience be.  Away,  ye  scandalous  Practical  Solecisms,  children 
actually  of  the  Prince  of  Darkness ;  ye  have  near  broken  our 
hearts  ;  we  can  and  will  endure  you  no  longer.  Begone,  we 
say  ;  depart,  while  the  play  is  good  !  By  the  Most  High  God, 
whose  sons  and  born  missionaries  true  men  are,  ye  shall  not  con- 
tinue here  !  You  and  we  have  become  incompatible  ;  can  inhabit 
one  house  no  longer.  Either  you  must  go,  or  we.  Are  ye  ambi- 
tious to  try  which  it  shall  be  ? 


THE    ENGLISH.  165 

O  my  Conservative  friends,  who  still  specially  name  and  strug- 
gle to  approve  yourselves  '  Conservative,'  would  to  Heaven  I 
could  persuade  you  of  this  world-old  fact,  than  which  Fate  is  not 
surer,  That  Truth  and  Justice  alone  are  capable  of  being  '  con- 
served '  and  preserved  !  The  thing  which  is  unjust,  which  is  not 
according  to  God's  Law,  will  you,  in  a  God's  Universe,  try  to 
conserve  that  1  It  is  so  old,  say  you  1  Yes,  and  the  hotter  haste 
ought  you,  of  all  others,  to  be  in  to  let  it  grow  no  older  !  If  but 
the  faintest  whisper  in  your  hearts  intimate  to  you  that  it  is  not 
fair, — hasten,  for  the  sake  of  Conservatism  itself,  to  probe  it 
rigorously,  to  cast  it  forth  at  once  and  forever  if  guilty.  How 
will  or  can  you  preserve  it,  the  thing  that  is  not  fair?  '  Impossi- 
bility '  a  thousandfold  is  marked  on  that.  And  ye  call  yourselves 
Conservatives,  Aristocracies  :  —  ought  not  honour  and  nobleness 
of  mind,  if  they  had  departed  from  all  the  Earth  elsewhere,  to  find 
their  last  refuge  with  you  ?     Ye  unfortunate ! 

The  bough  that  is  dead  shall  be  cut  away,  for  the  sake  of  the 
tree  itself.  Old?  Yes,  it  is  too  old.  Many  a  weary  winter  has 
it  swung  and  creaked  there,  and  gnawed  and  fretted,  with  its  dead 
wood,  the  organic  substance  and  still  living  fibre  of  this  good  tree  ; 
many  a  long  summer  has  its  ugly  naked  brown  defaced  the  fair 
green  umbrage ;  every  day  it  has  done  mischief,  and  that  only  : 
off  with  it,  for  the  tree's  sake,  if  for  nothing  more ;  let  the  Con- 
servatism that  would  preserve  cut  it  away.  Did  no  wood-forester 
apprise  you  that  a  dead  bough  with  its  dead  root  left  sticking  there 
is  extraneous,  poisonous  ;  is  as  a  dead  iron  spike,  some  horrid 
rusty  ploughshare  driven  into  the  living  substance  ;  —  nay  is  far 
worse  ;  for  in  every  windstorm  ('  commercial  crisis'  or  the  like), 
it  frets  and  creaks,  jolts  itself  to  and  fro,  and  cannot  lie  quiet  as 
your  dead  iron  spike  would  ! 

If  I  were  the  Conservative  Party  of  England  (which  is  another 
bold  figure  of  speech),  I  would  not  for  a  hundred  thousand  pounds 
an  hour  allow  those  Corn-Laws  to  continue  !  Potosi  and  Golconda 
put  together  would  not  purchase  my  assent  to  them.  Do  you  count 
what  treasuries  of  bitter  indignation  they  are  laying  up  for  you  in 
every  just  English  heart  1  Do  you  know  what  questions,  not  as 
to  Corn -prices  and  Sliding-scales  alone,  they  are  forcing  every 
reflective   Englishman  to  ask  himself?     Questions  insoluble,   or 


166  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

hitherto  unsolved  ;  deeper  than  any  of  our  Logic-plummets  hith- 
erto will  sound:  questions  deep  enough,  —  which  it  were  better 
that  we  did  not  name  even  in  thought !  You  are  forcing  us  to 
think  of  them,  to  begin  uttering  them.  The  utterance  of  them  is 
began  ;  and  where  will  it  be  ended,  think  you  1  When  two  mil- 
lions of  one's  brother-men  sit  in  Workhouses,  and  five  millions,  as 
is  insolently  said,  '  rejoice  in  potatoes,'  there  are  various  things 
that  must  be  begun,  let  them  end  where  they  can. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


TWO    CENTURIES. 


The  Settlement  effected  by  our  '  Healing  Parliament '  in  the  Year 
of  Grace  1660,  though  accomplished  under  universal  acclamations 
from  the  four  corners  of  the  British  Dominions,  turns  out  to  have 
been  one  of  the  mournfulest  that  ever  took  place  in  this  land  of 
ours.  It  called  and  thought  itself  a  Settlement  of  brightest  hope 
and  fulfilment,  bright  as  the  blaze  of  universal  tar-barrels  and  bon- 
fires could  make  it:  and  we  find  it  now,  on  looking  back  on  it 
with  the  insight  which  trial  has  yielded,  a  Settlement  as  of  de- 
spair. Considered  well,  it  was  a  settlement  to  govern  henceforth 
without  God,  with  only  some  decent  Pretence  of  God. 

Governing  by  the  Christian  Law  of  God  had  been  found  a  thing 
of  battle,  convulsion,  confusion,  an  infinitely  difficult  thing  :  where- 
fore let  us  now  abandon  it,  and  govern  only  by  so  much  of  God's 
Christian  Law  as  —  as  may  prove  quiet  and  convenient  for  us. 
What  is  the  end  of  Government  1  To  guide  men  in  the  way 
wherein  they  should  go  ;  towards  their  true  good  in  this  life,  the 
portal  of  infinite  good  in  a  life  to  come  1  To  guide  men  in  such 
way,  and  ourselves  in  such  way,  as  the  Maker  of  men,  whose  eye 
is  upon  us,  will  sanction  at  the  Great  Day  ?  —  Or  alas,  perhaps 
at  bottom  is  there  no  Great  Day,  no  sure  outlook  of  any  life  to 
come ;  but  only  this  poor  life,  and  what  of  taxes,  felicities,  Nell- 
Gwyns  and  entertainments,  we  can  manage  to  muster  here1?  In 
that  case,  the  end  of  Government  will  be,  To  suppress  all  noise 
and  disturbance,  whether  of  Puritan  preaching,  Cameronian  psalm- 
singing,  thieves'-riot,  murder,  arson,  or  what  noise  soever,  and  — 
be  careful  that  supplies  do  not  fail!  A  very  notable  conclusion, 
if  we  will  think  of  it ;  and  not  without  an  abundance  of  fruits  for 
us.     Oliver  Cromwell's  body  hung  on  the  Tyburn-gallows,  as 


168  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

the  type  of  Puritanism  found  futile,  inexecutable,  execrable, — 
yes,  that  gallows-tree  has  been  a  fingerpost  into  very  strange 
country  indeed.  Let  earnest  Puritanism  die  ;  let  decent  Formal- 
ism, whatsoever  cant  it  be  or  grow  to,  live !  We  have  had  a 
pleasant  journey  in  that  direction  ;  and  are  —  arriving  at  our  inn  1 

To  support  the  Four  Pleas  of  the  Crown,  and  keep  Taxes 
coming  in  :  in  very  sad  seriousness,  has  not  this  been,  ever  since, 
even  in  the  best  times,  almost  the  one  admitted  end  and  aim  of 
Government?  Religion,  Christian  Church,  Moral  Duty;  the 
fact  that  man  had  a  soul  at  all ;  that  in  man's  life  there  was  any 
eternal  truth  or  justice  at  all,  — has  been  as  good  as  left  quietly 
out  of  sight.  Church  indeed,  —  alas,  the  endless  talk  and  strug- 
gle we  have  had  of  High-Church,  Low-Church,  Church-Exten- 
sion, Church-in-D  anger  :  we  invite  the  Christian  reader  to  think 
whether  it  has  not  been  a  too  miserable  screech-owl  phantasm  of 
talk  and  struggle,  as  for  a  '  Church,'  — which  one  had  rather  not 
define  at  present ! 

But  now  in  these  godless  two  centuries,  looking  at  England  and 
her  efforts  and  doings,  if  we  ask,  What  of  England's  doings  the 
Law  of  Nature  had  accepted,  Nature's  King  had  actually  fur- 
thered and  pronounced  to  have  truth  in  them,  —  where  is  our  an- 
swer? Neither  the  '  Church  '  of  Hurd  and  Warburton,  nor  the 
Anti-church  of  Hume  and  Paine  ;  not  in  any  shape  the  Spiritual- 
ism of  England  :  all  this  is  already  seen,  or  beginning  to  be  seen, 
for  what  it  is  ;  a  thing  that  Nature  does  not  own.  On  the  one 
side  is  dreary  Cant,  with  a  reminiscence  of  things  noble  and  di- 
vine ;  on  the  other  is  but  acrid  Candour,  with  a  prophecy  of  things 
brutal,  infernal.  Hurd  and  Warburton  are  sunk  into  the  sere  and 
yellow  leaf;  no  considerable  body  of  true-seeing  men  looks  thith- 
erward for  healing  :  the  Paine-and-Hume  Atheistic  theory,  of 
'things  well  let  alone,'  with  Liberty,  Equality  and  the  like,  is 
also  in  these  days  declaring  itself  naught,  unable  to  keep  the 
world  from  taking  fire. 

The  theories  and  speculations  of  both  these  parties,  and,  we 
may  say,  of  all  intermediate  parties  and  persons,  prove  to  be  things 
which  the  Eternal  Veracity  did  not  accept ;  things  superficial, 
ephemeral,  which  already  a  near  Posterity,  finding  them  already 
dead  and  brown-leafed,  is  about  to  suppress  and  forget.     The 


TWO    CENTURIES.  169 

Spiritualism  of  England,  for  those  godless  years,  is,  as  it  were, 
all  forgettable.  Much  has  been  written  :  but  the  perennial  Scrip- 
tures of  Mankind  have  had  small  accession  :  from  all  English 
Books,  in  rhyme  or  prose,  in  leather  binding  or  in  paper  wrappage, 
how  many  verses  have  been  added  to  these !  Our  most  melodious 
Singers  have  sung  as  from  the  throat  outwards  :  from  the  inner 
Heart  of  Man,  from  the  great  Heart  of  Nature,  through  no  Pope 
or  Phillips,  has  there  come  any  tone.  The  Oracles  have  been 
dumb.  In  brief,  the  Spoken  Word  of  England  has  not  been  true. 
The  Spoken  Word  of  England  turns  out  to  have  been  trivial ;  of 
short  endurance  ;  not  valuable,  not  available  as  a  Word,  except 
for  the  passing  day.  It  has  been  accordant  with  transitory  Sem- 
blance ;  discordant  with  eternal  Fact.  It  has  been  unfortunately 
not  a  Word,  but  a  Cant ;  a  helpless  involuntary  Cant,  nay  too 
often  a  cunning  voluntary  one  :  either  way,  a  very  mournful  Cant ; 
the  Voice  not  of  Nature  and  Fact,  but  of  something  other  than 
these. 

With  all  its  miserable  shortcomings,  with  its  wars,  controver- 
sies, with  its  trades-unions,  famine-insurrections,  — it  is  her  Prac- 
tical Material  Work  alone  that  England  has  to  shew  for  herself ! 
This,  and  hitherto  almost  nothing  more  ;  yet  actually  this.  The 
grim  inarticulate  veracity  of  the  English  People,  unable  to  speak 
its  meaning  in  words,  has  turned  itself  silently  on  things  ;  and  the 
dark  powers  of  Material  Nature  have  answered  :  Yes,  this  at 
least  is  true,  this  is  not  false !  So  answers  Nature.  Waste 
desert-shrubs  of  the  Tropical  swamps  have  become  Cotton-trees  ; 
and  here,  under  my  furtherance,  are  verily  woven  shirts,  —  hang- 
ing unsold,  undistributed,  but  capable  to  be  distributed,  capable  to 
cover  the  bare  backs  of  my  children  of  men.  Mountains,  old  as 
the  Creation,  I  have  permitted  to  be  bored  through  :  bituminous 
fuel-stores,  the  wreck  of  forests  that  were  green  a  million  years 
ago,  —  I  have  opened  them  from  my  secret  rock-chambers,  and 
they  are  yours,  ye  English.  Your  huge  fleets,  steamships,  do 
sail  the  sea  :  huge  Indias  do  obey  you  ;  from  huge  New  Englands 
and  Antipodal  Australias,  comes  profit  and  traffic  to  this  Old 
England  of  mine  !  So  answers  Nature.  The  Practical  Labour 
of  England  is  not  a  chimerical  Triviality  :  it  is  a  Fact,  acknowl- 
edged by  all  the  Worlds  ;  which  no  man  and  no  demon  will  con- 
15 


170  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

tradict.  It  is,  very  audibly,  though  very  inarticulately  as  yet, 
the  one  God's  Voice  we  have  heard  in  these  two  atheistic  cen- 
turies. 

And  now  to  observe  with  what  bewildering  obscurations  and 
impediments  all  this  as  yet  stands  entangled,  and  is  yet  intelligible 
to  no  man !  How,  with  our  gross  Atheism,  we  hear  it  not  to  be 
the  Voice  of  God  to  us,  but  regard  it  merely  as  a  Voice  of  earthly 
Profit-and-Loss.  And  have  a  Hell  in  England,  —  the  Hell  of  not 
making  money.  And  coldly  see  the  all-conquering  valiant  Sons 
of  Toil  sit  enchanted,  by  the  million,  in  their  Poor-Law  Bastille, 
as  if  this  were  Nature's  Law  ; — mumbling  to  ourselves  some 
vague  janglement  of  Laissez-faire,  Supply-and-demand,  Cash-pay- 
ment the  one  nexus  of  man  to  man  :  Free-trade,  Competition,  and 
Devil  take  the  hindmost,  our  latest  Gospel  yet  preached  ! 

As  if,  in  truth,  there  were  no  God  of  Labour  ;  as  if  godlike 
Labour  and  brutal  Mammonism  were  convertible  terms.  A  se- 
rious, most  earnest  Mammonism  grown  Midas-eared  ;  an  unserious 
Dilettantism,  earnest  about  nothing,  grinning  with  inarticulate 
incredulous  incredible  jargon  about  all  things,  as  the  enchanted 
Dilettanti  do  by  the  Dead  Sea  !  It  is  mournful  enough,  for  the 
present  hour  ;  were  there  not  an  endless  hope  in  it  withal.  Giant 
Labour,  truest  emblem  there  is  of  God  the  World-Worker, 
Demiurgus,  and  Eternal  Maker  ;  noble  Labour,  which  is  yet  to 
be  the  King  of  this  Earth,  and  sit  on  the  highest  throne,  —  stag- 
gering hitherto  like  a  blind  irrational  giant,  hardly  allowed  to 
have  his  common  place  on  the  street-pavements ;  idle  Dilet- 
tantism, Dead-Sea  Apism,  crying  out,  "Down  with  him,  he  is 
dangerous  !  " 

Labour  must  become  a  seeing  rational  giant,  with  a  soul  in  the 
body  of  him,  and  take  his  place  on  the  throne  of  things,  — leav- 
ing his  Mammonism,  and  several  other  adjuncts,  on  the  lower 
steps  of  said  throne. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


OVER-PRODUCTION. 


But  what  will  reflective  readers  say  of  a  Governing  Class,  such 
as  ours,  addressing  its  Workers  with  an  indictment  of  •  Over- 
production !  '  Over-production  :  runs  it  not  so  1  "Ye  miscella- 
neous, ignoble  manufacturing  individuals,  ye  have  produced  too 
much  !  We  accuse  you  of  making  above  two-hundred  thousand 
shirts  for  the  bare  backs  of  mankind.  Your  trousers  too,  which 
you  have  made,  of  fustian,  of  cassimere,  of  Scotch-plaid,  of  jane, 
nankeen  and  woollen  broadcloth,  are  they  not  manifold'?  Of  hats 
for  the  human  head,  of  shoes  for  the  human  foot,  of  stools  to  sit 
on,  spoons  to  eat  with  —  Nay,  what  say  we  hats  or  shoes  ?  You 
produce  gold-watches,  jewelleries,  silver-forks  and  epergnes,  com- 
modes, chiffoniers,  stuffed  sofas  —  Heavens,  the  Commercial  Ba- 
zaar and  multitudinous  Howel-and-Jameses  cannot  contain  you. 
You  have  produced,  produced  ;  — he  that  seeks  your  indictment, 
let  him  look  around.  Millions  of  shirts,  and  empty  pairs  of 
breeches,  hang  there  in  judgment  against  you.  We  accuse  you 
of  over-producing  :  you  are  criminally  guilty  of  producing  shirts, 
breeches,  hats,  shoes  and  commodities,  in  a  frightful  over-abun- 
dance. And  now  there  is  a  glut,  and  your  operatives  cannot  be 
fed!" 

Never  surely,  against  an  earnest  Working  Mammonism  was 
there  brought,  by  Game-preserving  aristocratic  Dilettantism,  a 
stranger  accusation,  since  this  world  began.  My  lords  and  gen- 
tlemen,—  why,  it  was  you  that  were  appointed,  by  the  fact  and 
by  the  theory  of  your  position  on  the  Earth,  to  '  make  and  admin- 
ister Laws,'  —  that  is  to  say,  in  a  world  such  as  ours,  to  guard 
against  '  gluts ;  '  against  honest  operatives,  who  had  done  their 
work,  remaining  unfed !     I   say,  you  were  appointed  to  preside 


172  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

over  the  Distribution  and  Apportionment  of  the  Wages  of  Work 
done ;  and  to  see  well  that  there  went  no  labourer  without  his 
hire,  were  it  of  money-coins,  were  it  of  hemp  gallows-ropes  :  that 
function  was  yours,  and  from  immemorial  time  has  been  ;  yours, 
and  as  yet  no  other's.  These  poor  shirt-spinners  have  forgotten 
much,  which  by  the  virtual  unwritten  law  of  their  position  they 
should  have  remembered  :  but  by  any  written  recognised  law  of 
their  position,  what  have  they  forgotten?  They  were  set  to 
make  shirts.  The  Community  with  all  its  voices  commanded 
them,  saying  "  Make  shirts  ;  "  —  and  there  the  shirts  are  !  Too 
many  shirts?  Well,  that  is  a  novelty,  in  this  intemperate  Earth, 
with  its  nine-hundred  millions  of  bare  backs  !  But  the  Community 
commanded  you,  saying,  "  See  that  the  shirts  are  well  appor- 
tioned, that  our  Human  Laws  be  emblem  of  God's  Laws  ;  "  — 
and  where  is  the  apportionment?  Two  million  shirtless  or  ill— 
shirted  workers  sit  enchanted  in  Work-house  Bastilles,  five  mil- 
lion more  (according  to  some)  in  Ugolino  Hunger-cellars  ;  and 
for  remedy,  you  say,  —  what  say  you  ?  —  "  Raise  our  rents  !  "  I 
have  not  in  my  time  heard  any  stranger  speech,  not  even  on  the 
Shores  of  the  Dead  Sea.  You  continue  addressing  those  poor 
shirt-spinners,  and  over-producers,  in  really  a  too  triumphant 
manner : 

"  Will  you  bandy  accusations,  will  you  accuse  us  of  over-pro- 
duction ?  We  take  the  Heavens  and  the  Earth  to  witness  that  we 
have  produced  nothing  at  all.  Not  from  us  proceeds  this  frightful 
overplus  of  shirts.  In  the  wide  domains  of  created  Nature,  circu- 
lates no  shirt  or  thing  of  our  producing.  Certain  fox-brushes 
nailed  upon  our  stable-door,  the  fruit  of  fair  audacity  at  Melton 
Mowbray ;  these  we  have  produced,  and  they  are  openly  nailed 
up  there.  He  that  accuses  us  of  producing,  let  him  shew  himself, 
let  him  name  what  and  when.  We  are  innocent  of  producing  ;  — 
ye  ungrateful,  what  mountains  of  things  have  we  not,  on  the  con- 
trary, had  to  '  consume,'  and  make  away  with  !  Mountains  of 
those  your  heaped  manufactures,  wheresoever  edible  or  wearable, 
have  they  not  disappeared  before  us,  as  if  we  had  the  talent  of 
ostriches,  of  cormorants,  and  a  kind  of  divine  faculty  to  eat?  Ye 
ungrateful !  —  and  did  you  not  grow  under  the  shadow  of  our 
wings?     Are  not  your  filthy  mills  built  on  these  fields  of  ours  ; 


OVER-PRODUCTION.  173 

on  this  soil  of  England,  which  belongs  to  —  whom  think  you  ? 
And  we  shall  not  offer  you  our  own  wheat  at  the  price  that 
pleases  us,  but  that  partly  pleases  you?  A  precious  notion! 
What  would  become  of  you,  if  we  chose,  at  any  time,  to  decide  on 
growing  no  wheat  more?  " 

Yes,  truly,  here  is  the  ultimate  rock-basis  of  all  Corn-Law3  ; 
whereon,  at  the  bottom  of  much  arguing,  they  rest,  as  securely  as 
they  can  :  What  would  become  of  you,  if  we  decided,  some  day, 
on  growing  no  more  wheat  at  all  ?  If  we  chose  to  grow  only 
partridges  henceforth,  and  a  modicum  of  wheat  for  our  own  uses  ? 
Cannot  we  do  what  we  like  with  our  own?  —  Yes,  indeed  !  For 
my  share,  if  I  could  melt  Gneiss  Rock,  and  create  Law  of  Gavita- 
tion  ;  if  I  could  stride  out  to  the  Doggerbank,  some  morning,  and 
striking  down  my  trident  there  into  the  mud-waves,  say,  "Be 
land,  be  fields,  meadows,  mountains  and  fresh-rolling  streams  !  " 
by  Heaven,  I  should  incline  to  have  the  letting  of  that  land  in  per- 
petuity, and  sell  the  wheat  of  it,  or  burn  the  wheat  of  it,  accord- 
ing to  my  own  good  judgment !  My  Corn-Lawing  friends,  you 
affright  me. 

To  the  '  Millo-cracy  '  so-called,  to  the  Working  Aristocracy, 
steeped  too  deep  in  mere  ignoble  Mammonism,  and  as  yet  all  un- 
conscious of  its  noble  destinies,  as  yet  but  an  irrational  or  semi- 
rational  giant,  struggling  to  awake  some  soul  in  itself,  —  the 
world  will  have  much  to  say,  reproachfully,  reprovingly,  admon- 
ishingly.  But  to  the  Idle  Aristocracy,  what  will  the  world  have 
to  say  ?     Things  painful  and  not  pleasant  ! 

To  the  man  who  works,  who  attempts,  in  never  so  ungracious 
barbarous  a  way,  to  get  forward  with  some  work,  you  will  hasten 
out  with  furtherances,  with  encouragements,  corrections  ;  you 
will  say  to  him  :  "  Welcome,  thou  art  ours  ;  our  care  shall  be  of 
thee."  To  the  idler,  again,  never  so  gracefully  going  idle,  com- 
ing forward  wTith  never  so  many  parchments,  you  will  not  hasten 
out ;  you  will  sit  still,  and  be  disincline^  to  rise.  You  will  say  to 
him  :  "  Not  welcome,  O  complex  Anomaly  ;  would  thou  hadst 
staid  out  of  doors  :  for  who  of  mortals  knows  what  to  do  with 
thee  ?  Thy  parchments  :  yes,  they  are  old,  of  venerable  yellow- 
ness ;  and  we  too  honour  parchment,  old-established  settlements, 
15* 


174  THE    MODERN    WORKRR. 

and  venerable  use  and  wont.  Old  parchments  in  very  truth  :  — 
yet  on  the  whole,  if  thou  wilt  remark,  they  are  young  to  the 
Granite  Rocks,  to  the  Groundplan  of  God's  Universe  !  We  ad- 
vise thee  to  put  up  thy  parchments ;  to  go  home  to  thy  place,  and 
make  no  needless  noise  whatever.  Our  heart's  wish  is  to  save 
thee  :  yet  there  as  thou  art,  hapless  Anomaly,  with  nothing  but 
thy  yellow  parchments,  noisy  futilities,  and  shotbelts  and  fox- 
brushes, who  of  gods  or  men  can  avert  dark  Fate  ?  Be  coun- 
selled, ascertain  if  no  work  exist  for  thee  on  God's  Earth  ;  if  thou 
find  no  commanded-duty  there  but  that  of  going  gracefully  idle  ? 
Ask,  inquire  earnestly,  with  a  half-frantic  earnestness  ;  for  the 
answer  means  Existence  or  Annihilation  to  thee.  We  apprise 
thee  of  the  world-old  fact,  becoming  sternly  disclosed  again  in 
these  days,  That  he  who  cannot  work  in  this  Universe  cannot  get 
existed  in  it  :  had  he  parchments  to  thatch  the  face  of  the  world, 
these,  combustible  fallible  sheepskin,  cannot  avail  him.  Home, 
thou  unfortunate  ;  and  let  us  have  at  least  no  noise  from  thee  !  ' ' 

Suppose  the  unfortunate  Idle  Aristocracy,  as  the  unfortunate 
Working  one  has  done,  were  to  '  retire  three  days  to  its  bed,'  and 
consider  itself  there,  what  o'clock  it  had  become  1  — 

How  have  we  to  regret  not  only  that  men  have  '  no  religion,' 
but  that  they  have  next  to  no  reflection  :  and  go  about  with  heads 
full  of  mere  extraneous  noises,  with  eyes  wide-open  but  vision- 
less,  —  for  most  part,  in  the  somnambulist  state  ! 


CHAPTER   VIIL 


UNWORKING    ARISTOCRACY. 


It  is  well  said,  '  Land  is  the  right  basis  of  an  Aristocracy  ;'  who- 
ever possesses  the  Land,  he,  more  emphatically  than  any  other,  is 
the  Governor,  Viceking  of  the  people  on  the  Land.  It  is  in  these 
days  as  it  was  in  those  of  Henry  Plantagenet  and  Abbot  Samson  ; 
as  it  will  in  all  days  be.  The  Land  is  Mother  of  us  all ;  nourishes, 
shelters,  gladdens,  lovingly  enriches  us  all ;  in  how  many  ways, 
from  our  first  wakening  to  our  last  sleep  on  her  blessed  mother- 
bosom,  does  she,  as  with  blessed  mother-arms,  enfold  us  all ! 

The  Hill  I  first  saw  the  Sun  rise  over,  when  the  Sun  and  I  and 
all  things  were  yet  in  their  auroral  hour,  who  can  divorce  me  from 
it1?  Mystic,  deep  as  the  world's  centre,  are  the  roots  I  have  struck 
into  my  Native  Soil ;  no  tree  that  grows  is  rooted  so.  From  noblest 
Patriotism  to  humblest  industrial  Mechanism ;  from  highest  dying 
for  your  country,  to  lowest  quarrying  and  coal-boring  for  it,  a 
Nation's  Life  depends  upon  its  Land.  Again  and  again  we  have 
to  say,  there  can  be  no  true  Aristocracy  but  must  possess  the 
Land. 

Men  talk  of  '  selling '  Land.  Land,  it  is  true,  like  Epic  Poems 
and  even  higher  things,  in  such  a  trading  world,  has  to  be  pre- 
sented in  the  market  for  what  it  will  bring,  and  as  we  say  be 
1  sold  :'  but  the  notion  of  '  selling,'  for  certain  bits  of  metal,  the 
Iliad  of  Homer,  how  much  more  the  Land  of  the  World -Creator, 
is  a  ridiculous  impossibility  !  We  buy  what  is  saleable  of  it ;  no- 
thing more  was  ever  buyable.  Who  can,  or  could,  sell  it  to  us  1 
Properly  speaking,  the  Land  belongs  to  these  two  :  To  the  Al- 
mighty God  ;  and  to  all  His  Children  of  Men  that  have  ever  worked 
well  on  it,  or  that  shall  ever  work  well  on  it.  No  generation  of 
men  can  or  could,  with  never  such  solemnity  and  effort,  sell  Land 


176  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

on  any  other  principle  :  it  is  not  the  property  of  any  generation, 
we  say,  but  that  of  all  the  past  generations  that  have  worked  on 
it,  and  of  all  the  future  ones  that  shall  work  on  it. 

Again,  we  hear  it  said,  The  soil  of  England,  or  of  any  country, 
is  properly  worth  nothing,  except  '  the  labour  bestowed  on  it.' 
This,  speaking  even  in  the  language  of  Eastcheap,  is  not  correct. 
The  rudest  space  of  country  equal  in  extent  to  England,  could  a 
whole  English  Nation,  with  all  their  habitudes,  arrangements, 
skills,  with  whatsoever  they  do  carry  within  the  skins  of  them, 
and  cannot  be  stript  of,  suddenly  take  wing,  and  alight  on  it, — 
would  be  worth  a  very  considerable  thing  !  Swiftly,  within  year 
and  day,  this  English  Nation,  with  its  multiplex  talents  of  plough- 
ing, spinning,  hammering,  mining,  road-making  and  trafficking, 
would  bring  a  handsome  value  out  of  such  a  space  of  country. 
On  the  other  hand,  fancy  what  an  English  Nation,  once  '  on  the 
wing,'  could  have  done  with  itself,  had  there  been  simply  no  soil, 
not  even  an  inarable  one,  to  alight  on  ?  Vain  all  its  talents  for 
ploughing,  hammering,  and  whatever  else  ;  there  is  no  Earth-room 
for  this  Nation  with  its  talents  :  this  Nation  will  have  to  lerp 
hovering  on  the  wing,  dolefully  shrieking  to  and  fro  ;  and  perish 
piecemeal ;  burying  itself,  down  to  the  last  soul  of  it,  in  the  waste 
unnrmamented  seas.  Ah  yes,  soil,  with  or  without  ploughing,  is 
the  gift  of  God.  The  soil  of  all  countries  belongs  evermore,  in  a 
very  considerable  degree,  to  the  Almighty  Maker  !  The  last  stroke 
of  labour  bestowed  on  it  is  not  the  making  of  its  value,  but  only 
the  increasing  thereof. 

It  is  very  strange,  the  degree  to  which  these  truisms  are  forgot- 
ten in  our  days  ;  how,  in  the  ever-whirling  chaos  of  Formulas, 
we  have  quietly  lost  sight  of  Fact,  —  which  it  is  so  perilous  not 
to  keep  forever  in  sight !  Fact,  if  wTe  do  not  see  it,  will  make  us 
feel  it  by  and  by  !  —  From  much  loud  controversy  and  Corn-Law 
debating  there  rises,  loud  though  inarticulate,  once  more  in  these 
years,  this  very  question  among  others.  Who  made  the  Land  of 
England?  Who  made  it,  this  respectable  English  Land,  wheat- 
growing,  metalliferous,  carboniferous,  which  will  let  readily  hand 
over  head  for  seventy  millions  or  upwards,  as  it  here  lies  :  who 
did  make  it?  —  "We!"  answer  the  much-consuming  Aristoc- 
racy; "  We  !  "  as  they  ride  in,  moist  with  the  sweat  of  Melton 


UNWORKING   ARISTOCRACY.  177 

Mowbray  :  "It  is  we  that  made  it ;  or  are  the  heirs,  assigns  and 
representatives  of  those  who  did  !  "  —  My  brothers,  You  1  Ever- 
lasting honour  to  you,  then  ;  and  Corn-Laws  as  many  as  you  will, 
till  your  own  deep  stomachs  cry  Enough,  or  some  voice  of  human 
pity  for  our  famine  bids  you  Hold !  Ye  are  as  gods,  that  can 
create  soil.  Soil-creating  gods  there  is  no  withstanding.  They 
have  the  might  to  sell  wheat  at  what  price  they  list ;  and  the 
right,  to  all  lengths,  and  famine-lengths,  —  if  they  be  pitiless  in- 
fernal gods !  Celestial  gods,  I  think,  would  stop  short  of  the 
famine-price  ;  but  no  infernal  nor  any  kind  of  god  can  be  bidden 

stop  ! Infatuated  mortals,  into  what  questions  are  you  driving 

every  thinking  man  in  England  1 

I  say,  you  did  not  make  the  Land  of  England  ;  and,  by  the  pos- 
session of  it,  you  are  bound  to  furnish  guidance  and  governance  to 
England  !  That  is  the  law  of  your  position  on  this  God's-Earth  ; 
an  everlasting  act  of  Heaven's  Parliament,  not  repealable  in  St. 
Stephen's  or  elsewhere  !  True  government  and  guidance ;  not 
no-government  and  Laissez-faire  ;  how  much  less,  mzsgovernment 
and  Corn-Law  !  There  is  not  an  imprisoned  Worker  looking  out 
from  these  Bastilles  but  appeals,  very  audibly  in  Heaven's  High 
Courts,  against  you,  and  me,  and  every  one  who  is  not  imprison- 
ed, "  Why  am  I  here?  "  His  appeal  is  audible  in  Heaven  ;  and 
will  become  audible  enough  on  Earth  too,  if  it  remain  unheeded 
here.  His  appeal  is  against  you,  foremost  of  all ;  you  stand  in 
the  front-rank  of  the  accused  ;  you,  by  the  very  place  you  hold, 
have  first  of  all  to  answer  him  and  Heaven ! 

What  looks  maddest,  miserablest  in  these  mad  and  miserable 
Corn-Laws  is  independent  altogether  of  their  '  effect  on  wages,' 
their  effect  on  '  increase  of  trade,'  or  any  other  such  effect :  it  is 
the  continual  maddening  proof  they  protrude  into  the  faces  of  all 
men,  that  our  Governing  Class,  called  by  God  and  Nature  and  the 
inflexible  law  of  Fact,  either  to  do  something  towards  governing, 
or  to  die  and  be  abolished,  —  have  not  yet  learned  even  to  sit  still, 
and  do  no  mischief!  For  no  Anti-Corn-Law  League  yet  asks 
more  of  them  than  this  ;  —  Nature  and  Fact,  very  imperatively, 
asking  so  much  more  of  them.  Anti-Corn-Law  League  asks  not, 
Do  something :  but,  Cease  your  destructive  misdoing,  Do  ye 
nothing ! 


178  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Nature's  message  will  have  itself  obeyed  :  messages  of  mere 
Free-Trade,  Anti-Corn-Law  League  and  Laissez-faire,  will  then 
need  small  obeying  !  — Ye  fools,  in  name  of  Heaven,  work,  work, 
at  the  Ark  of  Deliverance  for  yourselves  and  us,  while  hours  are 
still  granted  you !  No  :  instead  of  working  at  the  Ark,  they 
say,  "We  cannot  get  our  hands  kept  rightly  warm;  "  and  sit 
obstinately  burning  the  planks.  No  madder  spectacle  at  present 
exhibits  itself  under  this  Sun. 

The  Working  Aristocracy  ;  Mill-owners,  Manufacturers,  Com- 
manders of  Working  Men  :  alas,  against  them  also  much  shall 
be  brought  in  accusation  ;  much,  — and  the  freest  Trade  in  Corn, 
total  abolition  of  Tariffs,  and  uttermost  '  Increase  of  Manufac- 
tures'  and  '  Prosperity  of  Commerce,'  will  permanently  mend  no 
jot  of  it.  The  Working  Aristocracy  must  strike  into  a  new  path  ; 
must  understand  that  money  alone  is  not  the  representative  either 
of  man's  success  in  the  world,  or  of  man's  duties  to  man  ;  and 
reform  their  own  selves  from  top  to  bottom,  if  they  wish  Eng- 
land reformed.     England  will  not  be  habitable  long,  unreformed. 

The  Working  Aristocracy  —  Yes,  but  on  the  threshold  of  all 
this,  it  is  again  and  again  to  be  asked,  What  of  the  Idle  Aristoc- 
racy? Again  and  again,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  Idle  Aristoc- 
racy, the  Owners  of  the  Soil  of  England  ;  whose  recognised 
function  is  that  of  handsomely  consuming  the  rents  of  England, 
shooting  the  partridges  of  England,  and  as  an  agreeable  amuse- 
ment (if  the  purchase-money  and  other  conveniences  serve),  dilet- 
tante-ing  in  Parliament  and  Quarter-Sessions  for  England  ?  We 
will  say  mournfully,  in  the  presence  of  Heaven  and  Earth,  — that 
we  stand  speechless,  stupent,  and  know  not  what  to  say  !  That 
a  class  of  men  entitled  to  live  sumptuously  on  the  marrow  of  the 
earth ;  permitted  simply,  nay  entreated,  and  as  yet  entreated  in 
vain,  to  do  nothing  at  all  in  return,  was  never  heretofore  seen  on  the 
face  of  this  Planet.  That  such  a  class  is  transitory,  exceptional, 
and,  unless  Nature's  Laws  fall  dead,  cannot  continue.  That  it 
has  continued  now  a  moderate  while  ;  has,  for  the  last  fifty  years, 
been  rapidly  attaining  its  state  of  perfection.  That  it  will  have 
to  find  its  duties  and  do  them  ;  or  else  that  it  must  and  will  cease 
to  be  seen  on  the  face  of  this  Planet,  which  is  a  Working  one, 
not  an  Idle  one. 


UNWORKING   ARISTOCRACY.  179 

Alas,  alas,  the  Working  Aristocracy,  admonished  by  Trades- 
unions,  Chartist  conflagrations,  above  all  by  their  own  shrewd 
sense  kept  in  perpetual  communion  with  the  fact  of  things,  will 
assuredly  reform  themselves,  and  a  working  world  will  still  be 
possible  :  —  but  the  fate  of  the  Idle  Aristocracy,  as  one  reads  its 
horoscope  hitherto  in  Corn-Laws  and  such  like,  is  an  abyss  that 
fills  one  with  despair.  Yes,  my  rosy  fox-hunting  brothers,  a  ter- 
rible Hippocratic  look  reveals  itself  (God  knows,  not  to  my  joy) 
through  those  fresh  buxom  countenances  of  yours  Through 
your  Corn-Law  Majorities,  Sliding-Scales,  Protecting-Duties, 
Bribery-Elections  and  triumphant  Kentish-fire,  a  thinking  eye 
discerns  ghastly  images  of  ruin,  too  ghastly  for  words  ;  a  hand- 
writing as  of  Mene,  Mene.  Men  and  brothers,  on  your  Sliding- 
scale  you  seem  sliding ,  and  to  have  slid,  —  you  little  know  whither  ! 
Good  God  !  did  not  a  French  Donothing  Aristocracy,  hardly  above 
half  a  century-  ago,  declare  in  like  manner,  and  in  its  featherhead 
believe  in  like  manner,  "  We  cannot  exist,  and  continue  to  dress 
and  parade  ourselves,  on  the  just  rent  of  the  soil  of  France  ;  but 
we  must  have  farther  payment  than  rent  of  the  soil,  we  must  be 
exempted  from  taxes  too,"  —  we  must  have  a  Corn-Law  to  ex- 
tend our  rent  1  This  was  in  1789  :  in  four  years  more  —  Did  you 
look  into  the  Tanneries  of  Meudon,  and  the  long-naked  making 
for  themselves  breeches  of  human  skins  !  May  the  merciful 
Heavens  avert  the  omen  ;  may  we  be  wiser,  that  so  we  be  less 
wretched. 

A  High  Class  without  duties  to  do  is  like  a  tree  planted  on 
precipices  ;  from  the  roots  of  which  all  the  earth  has  been  crum- 
bling. Nature  owns  no  man  who  is  not  a  Martyr  withal.  Is 
there  a  man  who  pretends  to  live  luxuriously  housed  up  ;  screened 
from  all  work,  from  want,  danger,  hardship,  the  victory  over 
which  is  what  we  name  work  ;  — he  himself  to  sit  serene,  amid 
down-bolsters  and  appliances,  and  have  all  his  work  and  battling 
done  by  other  men?  And  such  man  calls  himsel f  a  wo&Ze-man  1 
His  fathers  worked  for  him,  he  says  ;  or  successfully  gambled  for 
him  :  here  he  sits ;  professes,  not  in  sorrow  but  in  pride,  that 
he  and  his  have  done  no  work,  time  out  of  mind.  It  is  the  law 
of  the  land,  and  is  thought  to  be  the  law  of  the  Universe,  that  he, 


180  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

alone  of  recorded  men,  shall  have  no  task  laid  on  him,  except 
that  of  eating  his  cooked  victuals,  and  not  flinging  himself  out 
of  window.  Once  more  I  will  say,  there  was  no  stranger  specta- 
cle ever  shewn  under  this  Sun.  A  veritable  fact  in  our  England 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  His  victuals  he  does  eat  :  but  as 
for  keeping  in  the  inside  of  the  window,  —  have  not  his  friends, 
like  me,  enough  to  do  ?  Truly,  looking  at  his  Corn-Laws,  Game- 
Laws,  Chandos-Clauses,  Bribery-Elections  and  much  else,  you 
do  shudder  over  the  tumbling  and  plunging  he  makes,  held  back 
by  the  lappelles  and  coatskirts  ;  only  a  thin  fence  of  window-glass 
before  him,  —  and  in  the  street  mere  horrid  iron  spikes!  My 
sick  brother,  as  in  hospital  maladies  men  do,  thou  dreamest  of 
Paradises  and  Eldorados,  which  are  far  from  thee.  '  Cannot  I 
do  what  I  like  with  my  own  !  '  Gracious  Heaven,  my  brother, 
this  that  thou  seest  with  those  sick  eyes  is  no  firm  Eldorado,  and 
Corn-Law  Paradise  of  Donothings,  but  a  dream  of  thy  own  fevered 
brain.  It  is  a  glass-window,  I  tell  thee,  so  many  stories  from 
the  street ;  where  are  iron  spikes  and  the  law  of  gravitation  ! 

What  is  the  meaning  of  nobleness,  if  this  be  '  noble?  '  In  a 
valiant  suffering  for  others,  not  in  a  slothful  making  others  suffer 
for  us,  did  nobleness  ever  lie.  The  chief  of  men  is  he  who 
stands  in  the  van  of  men  ;  fronting  the  peril  which  frightens  back 
all  others  ;  which,  if  it  be  not  vanquished,  will  devour  the  others. 
Every  noble  crown  is,  and  on  Earth  will  forever  be,  a  crown  of 
thorns.  The  Pagan  Hercules,  why  was  he  accounted  a  hero  ? 
Because  he  had  slain  Nemean  Lions,  cleansed  Augean  Stables, 
undergone  Twelve  Labours  only  not  too  heavy  for  a  god.  In 
modern,  as  in  ancient  and  all  societies,  the  Aristocracy,  they  that 
assume  the  functions  of  an  Aristocracy,  doing  them"  or  not,  have 
taken  the  post  of  honour  ;  which  is  the  post  of  difficulty,  the  post 
of  danger,  —  of  death,  if  the  difficulty  be  not  overcome.  II  faut 
payer  de  savie.  Why  was  our  life  given  us,  if  not  that  we  should 
manfully  give  it?  Descend,  O  Donothing  Pomp  ;  quit  thy  down- 
cushions  ;  expose  thyself  to  learn  what  wretches  feel,  and  how 
to  cure  it !  The  Czar  of  Russia  became  a  dusty  toiling  ship- 
wright ;  worked  with  his  axe  in  the  docks  of  Saardam ;  and 
his  aim  was  small  to  thine.  Descend  thou  :  undertake  this  hor- 
rid '  living  chaos  of  Ignorance  and  Hunger  '  weltering  round  thy 


UNWORKING    ARISTOCRACY.  181 

feet ;  say,  "  I  will  heal  it,  or  behold  I  will  die  foremost  in  it." 
Such  is  verily  the  law.  Everywhere  and  everywhen  a  man  has 
to  '  pay  with  his  life ;  '  to  do  his  work,  as  a  soldier  does,  at  the 
expense  of  life.  In  no  Piepowder  earthly  Court  can  you  sue  an 
Aristocracy  to  do  its  work,  at  this  moment :  but  in  the  Higher 
Court,  which  even  it  calls  '  Court  of  Honour,'  and  which  is  the 
Court  of  Necessity  withal,  and  the  eternal  Court  of  the  Universe, 
in  which  all  Fact  comes  to  plead,  and  every  Human  Soul  is  an 
apparitor,  —  the  Aristocracy  is  answerable,  and  even  now  answer- 
ing, there. 

Parchments  1  Parchments  are  venerable  :  but  they  ought  at  all 
times  to  represent,  as  near  as  they  by  possibility  can,  the  writing 
of  the  Adamant  Tablets  ;  otherwise  they  are  not  so  venerable  ! 
Benedict  the  Jew  in  vain  pleaded  parchments  ;  his  usuries  were 
too  many.  The  King  said,  "  Go  to,  for  all  thy  parchments,  thou 
shalt  pay  just  debt ;  down  with  thy  dust,  or  observe  this  tooth- 
forceps  !  "  Nature,  a  far  juster  Sovereign,  has  far  terribler  for- 
ceps. Aristocracies,  actual  and  imaginary,  reach  a  time  when 
parchment  pleading  does  not  avail  them.  "  Go  to,  for  all  thy 
parchments,  thou  shalt  pay  due  debt  !  "  shouts  the  Universe  to 
them,  in  an  emphatic  manner.  They  refuse  to  pay,  confidently 
pleading  parchment :  their  best  grinder-tooth,  with  horrible  ago- 
ny, goes  out  of  their  jaw.  Wilt  thou  pay  now  1  A  second  grind- 
er, again  in  horrible  agony,  goes  :  a  second,  and  a  third,  and  if 
need  be,  all  the  teeth  and  grinders,  and  the  life  itself  with  them  ; 
—  and  then  there  is  free  payment,  and  an  anatomist-subject  into 
the  bargain  ! 

Reform  Bills,  Corn-Law  Abrogation  Bills,  and  then  Land-Tax 
Bill,  Property-Tax  Bill,  and  still  dimmer  list  of  etceteras ;  grinder 
after  grinder  :  —  my  lords  and  gentlemen,  it  were  better  for  you 
to  arise,  and  begin  doing  your  work,  than  sit  there  and  plead 
parchments ! 

We  write  no  Chapter  on  the  Corn-Laws,  in  this  place  ;  the 

Corn-Laws  are  too  mad  to  have  a  Chapter.     There  is  a  certain 

immorality,  when  there  is  not  a  necessity,  in  speaking   about 

things  finished  ;  in  chopping  into  small  pieces  the  already  slashed 

16 


182  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

and  slain.  When  the  brains  are  out,  why  does  not  a  Solecism 
die  !  It  is  at  its  own  peril  if  it  refuse  to  die  ;  it  ought  to  make  all 
conceivable  haste  to  die,  and  get  itself  buried !  The  trade  of 
Anti-Corn  Law  Lecturer  in  these  days,  still  an  indispensable,  is  a 
highly  tragic  one. 

The  Corn-Laws  will  go,  and  even  soon  go  :  would  we  were  all 
as  sure  of  the  Millennium  as  they  are  of  going  !  They  go  swiftly 
in  these  present  months  ;  with  an  increase  of  velocity,  an  ever- 
deepening,  ever-widening  sweep  of  momentum,  truly  notable.  It 
is  at  the  Aristocracy's  own  damage  and  peril,  still  more  than  at 
any  other's  whatsoever,  that  the  Aristocracy  maintains  them  ;  — 
at  a  damage,  say  only,  as  above  computed,  of  a  'hundred  thou- 
sand pounds  an  hour  !  '  The  Corn-Laws  keep  all  the  air  hot  : 
fostered  by  their  fever-warmth,  much  that  is  evil,  but  much  also, 
how  much  that  is  good  and  indispensable,  is  rapidly  coming  to  life 
among  us  ! 


CHAPTER  IX. 

WORKING    ARISTOCRACY. 

A  poor  Working  Mammonism  getting  itself  '  strangled  in  the 
partridge-nets  of  an  TJnworking  Dilettantism,'  and  bellowing  dread- 
fully, and  already  black  in  the  face,  is  surely  a  disastrous  specta- 
cle !  But  of  a  Midas-eared  Mammonism,  which  indeed  at  bottom 
all  pure  Mammonisms  are,  what  better  can  you  expect?  No 
better  ;  — if  not  this,  then  something  other  equally  disastrous,  if 
not  still  more  disastrous.  Mammonisms,  grown  asinine,  have  to 
become  human  again,  and  rational ;  they  have,  on  the  whole,  to 
cease  to  be  Mammonisms,  were  it  even  on  compulsion,  and  pres- 
sure of  the  hemp  round  their  neck!  —  My  friends  of  the  Working 
Aristocracy,  there  are  now  a  great  many  things  which  you  also, 
in  your  extreme  need,  will  have  to  consider, 

The  Continental  people,  it  would  seem,  are  '  exporting  our 
'  machinery,  beginning  to  spin  cotton  and  manufacture  for  them- 
'  selves,  to  cut  us  out  of  this  market  and  then  out  of  that !  '  Sad 
news  indeed  ;  but  irremediable  ;  —  by  no  means  the  saddest  news. 
The  saddest  news  is,  that  we  should  find  our  National  Existence, 
as  I  sometimes  hear  it  said,  depend  on  selling  manufactured  cot- 
ton at  a  farthing  an  ell  cheaper  than  any  other  People.  A  most 
narrow  stand  for  a  great  Nation  to  base  itself  on  !  A  stand 
which,  with  all  the  Corn-Law  Abrogations  conceivable,  I  do  not 
think  will  be  capable  of  enduring. 

My  friends,  suppose  we  quitted  that  stand  ;  suppose  we  came 
honestly  down  from  it,  and  said  :  "This  is  our  minimum  of  cotton- 
prices.  We  care  not,  for  the  present,  to  make  cotton  any  cheaper. 
Do  you,  if  it  seem  so  blessed  to  you,  make  cotton  cheaper.  Fill 
your  lungs  with  cotton-fuz,  your  hearts   with  copperas-fumes, 


184  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

with  rage  and  mutiny;  become  ye  the  general  gnomes  of  Europe, 
slaves  of  the  lamp  !  "  — I  admire  a  Nation  which  fancies  it  will 
die  if  it  do  not  undersell  all  other  Nations,  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
Brothers,  we  will  cease  to  undersell  them  ;  we  will  be  content  to 
equal-sell  them  ;  to  be  happy,  selling  equally  with  them  !  I  do  not 
see  the  use  of  underselling  them.  Cotton-cloth  is  already  two- 
pence a  yard  or  lower  ;  and  yet  bare  backs  were  never  more  nu- 
merous among  us.  Let  inventive  men  cease  to  spend  their  exist- 
ence incessantly  contriving  how  cotton  can  be  made  cheaper  ;  and 
try  to  invent,  a  little,  how  cotton  at  its  present  cheapness  could  be 
somewhat  justlier  divided  among  us  !  Let  inventive  men  consider, 
Whether  the  Secret  of  this  Universe,  and  of  Man's  Life  there, 
does,  after  all,  as  we  rashly  fancy  it,  consist  in  making  money? 
There  is  One  God,  just,  supreme,  almighty  :  but  is  Mammon  the 
name  of  him  ?  —  With  a  Hell  which  means  '  Failing  to  make 
money,'  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  Heaven  possible  that  would 
suit  one  well ;  nor  so  much  as  an  Earth  that  can  be  habitable 
long!  In  brief,  all  this  Mammon- Gospel  of  Supply-and-demand, 
Competition,  Laissez-faire,  and  Devil  take  the  hindmost,  begins  to 
be  one  of  the  shabbiest  Gospels  ever  preached  on  Earth  ;  or  alto- 
gether the  shabbiest.  Even  with  Dilettante  partridge-nets,  and  at 
a  horrible  expenditure  of  pain,  who  shall  regret  to  see  the  entirely 
transient,  and  at  best  somewhat  despicable  life  strangled  out  of  it? 
At  the  best,  as  we  say,  a  somewhat  despicable,  unvenerable  thing, 
this  same  '  Laissez-faire  ;'  and  now,  at  the  ivorst,  fast  growing  an 
altogether  detestable  one  ! 

"  But  what  is  to  be  done  with  our  manufacturing  population, 
with  our  agricultural,  with  our  ever-increasing  population?  "  cry 
many.  —  Aye,  what  1  Many  things  can  be  done  with  them,  a 
hundred  things,  and  a  thousand  things,  —  had  we  once  got  a  soul, 
and  begun  to  try.  This  one  thing,  of  doing  for  them  by  '  under- 
selling all  people,'  and  filling  our  own  bursten  pockets  and  appe- 
tites by  the  road  ;  and  turning  over  all  care  for  any  '  population,' 
or  human  or  divine  consideration  except  cash  only,  to  the  winds, 
with  a  "  Laissez-faire"  and  the  rest  of  it :  this  is  evidently  not 
the  thing.  '  Farthing  cheaper  per  yard  : '  no  great  Nation  can 
stand  on  the  apex  of  such  a  pyramid  ;  screwing  itself  higher  and 
higher  ;  balancing  itself  on  its  great-toe  !     Can  England  not  sub- 


WORKING    ARISTOCRACY.  185 

sist  without  being  above  all  people  in  working  1  England  never 
deliberately  purposed  such  a  thing.  If  England  work  better  than 
all  people,  it  shall  be  well.  England,  like  an  honest  worker, 
will  work  as  well  as  she  can  ;  and  hope  the  gods  may  allow  her 
to  live  on  that  basis.  Laissez-faire  and  much  else  being  once  well 
dead,  how  many  '  impossibles  '  will  become  possible  !  They  are 
'  impossible,'  as  cotton-cloth  at  two-pence  an  ell  was  —  till  men 
set  about  making  it.  The  inventive  genius  of  great  England  will 
not  forever  sit  patient  with  mere  wheels  and  pinions,  bobbins, 
straps  and  billy-rollers  whirring  in  the  head  of  it.  The  inventive 
genius  of  England  is  not  a  Beaver's,  or  a  Spinner's  or  Spider's 
genius  :  it  is  a  Man's  genius,  I  hope,  with  a  God  over  him  ! 

Supply-and-demand?  One  begins  to  be  weary  of  such  work. 
Leave  all  to  egoism,  to  ravenous  greed  of  money,  of  pleasure,  of 
applause  :  —  it  is  the  Gospel  of  Despair  !  Man  is  a  Patent-Di- 
gester, then :  only  give  him  Free  Trade,  Free  digestirg-room  ; 
and  each  of  us  digest  what  he  can  come  at,  leaving  the  rest  to 
Fate  !  My  unhappy  brethren  of  the  Working  Mammonism,  my 
unhappier  brethren  of  the  Idle  Dilettantism,  no  world  was  ever 
held  together  in  that  way  for  long.  A  world  of  mere  Patent-Di- 
gesters will  soon  have  nothing  to  digest ;  such  world  ends,  and 
by  Law  of  Nature  must  end,  in  '  over-population  ;  '  in  howling 
universal  famine,  '  impossibility,'  and  suicidal  madness,  as  of  end- 
less dog-kennels  run  rabid.  Supply-and-demand  shall  do  its  full 
part,  and  Free  Trade  shall  be  free  as  air  ;  —  thou  of  the  shotbelts, 
see  thou  forbid  it  not,  with  those  paltry,  worse  than  '  Mammonish  ' 
swindleries  and  Sliding-scales  of  thine,  which  are  seen  to  be  swin- 
dleries  for  all  thy  canting,  which  in  times  like  ours  are  very  scan- 
dalous to  see  !  And  Trade  never  so  well  freed,  and  all  Tariffs 
settled  or  abolished,  and  Supply-and-demand  in  full  operation, — 
let  us  all  know  that  we  have  yet  done  nothing  ;  that  we  have 
merely  cleared  the  ground  for  doing. 

Yes,  were  the  Corn-Laws  ended  tomorrow,  there  is  nothing  yet 
ended  ;  there  is  only  room  made  for  all  manner  of  things  begin- 
ning. The  Corn-Laws  gone,  and  Trade  made  free,  it  is  as  good 
as  certain  this  paralysis  of  industry  will  pass  away.  We  shall 
have  another  period  of  commercial  enterprise,  of  victory  and  pros- 
perity ;  during  which,  it  is  likely,  much  money  will  again  be 
16* 


186  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

made,  and  all  the  people  may,  by  the  extant  methods,  still  for  a 
space  of  years,  be  kept  alive  and  physically  fed.  The  strangling 
band  of  Famine  will  be  loosened  from  onr  necks  ;  we  shall  have 
room  again  to  breathe  ;  time  to  bethink  ourselves,  to  repent  and 
consider  !  A  precious  and  thrice-precious  space  of  years ;  wherein 
to  struggle  as  for  life  in  reforming  our  foul  ways ;  in  alleviating, 
instructing,  regulating  our  people  ;  seeking,  as  for  life,  that  some- 
thing like  spiritual  food  be  imparted  them,  some  real  governance 
and  guidance  be  provided  them  !  It  will  be  a  priceless  time. 
For  our  new  period  or  paroxysm  of  commercial  prosperity  will 
and  can,  on  the  old  methods  of '  Competition  and  Devil  take  the 
hindmost,'  prove  but  a  paroxysm:  a  new  paroxysm, — likely 
enough,  if  we  do  not  use  it  better,  to  be  our  last.  In  this,  of 
itself,  is  no  salvation.  If  our  Trade  in  twenty  years,  '  flourishing  ' 
as  never  Trade  nourished,  could  double  itself ;  yet  then  also, 
by  the  old  Laissez-faire  method,  our  Population  is  doubled  :  we 
shall  then  be  as  we  are,  only  twice  as  many  of  us,  twice  and  ten 
times  as  unmanageable  ! 

All  this  dire  misery,  therefore  ;  all  this  of  our  poor  Workhouse 
Workmen,  of  our  Chartisms,  Trades-strikes,  Corn-Laws,  Tory- 
isms, and  the  general  down-break  of  Laissez-faire  in  these  days, 
—  may  we  not  regard  it  as  a  voice  from  the  dumb  bosom  of  Na- 
ture, saying  to  us  :  Behold  !  Supply-and-demand  is  not  the  one 
Law  of  Nature  ;  Cash-payment  is  not  the  sole  nexus  of  man  with 
man,  —  how  far  from  it!  Deep,  far  deeper  than  Supply-and- 
demand,  are  Laws,  Obligations  sacred  as  Man's  Life  itself:  these 
also,  if  you  will  continue  to  do  work,  you  shall  now  learn  and 
obey.  He  that  will  learn  them,  behold  Nature  is  on  his  side,  he 
shall  yet  work  and  prosper  with  noble  rewards.  He  that  will  not 
learn  them,  Nature  is  against  him  :  he  shall  not  be  able  to  do 
work  in  Nature's  empire,  —  not  in  hers.  Perpetual  mutiny,  con- 
tention, hatred,  isolation,  execration  shall  wait  on  his  footsteps, 
till  all  men  discern  that  the  thing  which  he  attains,  however 
golden  it  look  or  be,  is  not  success,  but  the  want  of  success. 

Supply-and-demand,  —  alas  !  For  what  noble  work  was  there 
ever  yet  any  audible  '  demand  '  in  that  poor  sense  1  The  man  of 
Macedonia,  speaking  in  vision  to  an  Apostle  Paul,  ';  Come  over 


Working  aristocracy.  187 

and  help  us,"  did  not  specify  what  rate  of  wages  he  would  give ! 
Or  was  the  Christian  Religion  itself  accomplished  by  Prize-Essays, 
Bridgewater  Bequests,  and  a  '  minimum  of  Four  thousand  five 
hundred  a  year? '  No  demand  that  I  heard  of  was  made  then, 
audible  in  any  Labour-market,  Manchester  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
or  other  the  like  emporium  and  hiring  establishment ;  silent  were 
all  these  from  any  whisper  of  such  demand  ;  —  powerless  were  all 
these  to  '  supply  '  it,  had  the  demand  been  in  thunder  and  earth- 
quake, with  gold  Eldorados  and  Mahometan  Paradises  for  the  re- 
ward. Ah  me,  into  what  waste  latitudes,  in  this  Time- Voyage, 
have  we  wandered  ;  like  adventurous  Sindbads  ;  —  where  the  men 
go  about  as  if  by  galvanism,  with  meaningless  glaring  eyes,  and 
have  no  soul,  but  only  a  heaver-faculty  and  stomach  !  The  hag- 
gard despair  of  Cotton-factory,  Coal-mine  operatives,  Chandos 
Farm-labourers,  in  these  days,  is  painful  to  behold  ;  but  not  so 
painful,  hideous  to  the  inner  sense,  as  that  brutish  godforgetting 
Proflt-and-Loss  Philosophy,  and  Life-theory,  which  we  hear 
jangled  on  all  hands  of  us,  in  senate-houses,  spouting-clubs,  lead- 
ing-articles, pulpits  and  platforms,  everywhere  as  the  Ultimate 
Gospel  and  candid  Plain-English  of  Man's  Life,  from  the  throats 
and  pens  and  thoughts  of  all  but  all  men  !  — 

Enlightened  Philosophies,  like  Moliere  Doctors,  will  tell  you  : 
"  Enthusiasms,  Self-sacrifice,  Heaven,  Hell  and  such  like  :  yes, 
all  that  was  true  enough  for  old  stupid  times  ;  all  that  used  to  be 
true  :  but  we  have  changed  all  that,  nous  avons  change  tout  cela  !  " 
Well ;  if  the  heart  be  got  round  now  into  the  right  side,  and  the 
liver  to  the  left  ;  if  man  have  no  heroism  in  him  deeper  than  the 
wish  to  eat,  and  in  his  soul  there  dwell  now  no  Infinite  of  Hope 
and  Awe,  and  no  divine  Silence  can  become  imperative  because  it 
is  not  Sinai  Thunder,  and  no  tie  will  bind  if  it  be  not  that  of  Ty- 
burn gallows-ropes, — then  verily  you  have  changed  all  that;  and 
for  it,  and  for  you,  and  for  me,  behold  the  Abyss  and  nameless 
Annihilation  is  ready.  So  scandalous  a  beggarly  Universe  de- 
serves indeed  nothing  else  ;  I  cannot  say  I  would  save  it  from 
Annihilation.  Vacuum,  and  the  serene  Blue,  will  be  much  hand- 
somer ;  easier  too  for  all  of  us.  I,  for  one,  decline  living  as  a  Pa- 
tent-Digester. Patent-Digester,  Spinning-Mule,  Mayfair  Clothes- 
Horse  :  many  thanks,  but  your  Chaosships  will  have  the  goodness 
to  excuse  me  ! 


CHAPTER  X. 


PLUGSON    OF    UNDERSHOT. 


One  thing  I  do  know  :  Never,  on  this  Earth,  was  the  relation  of 
man  to  man  long  carried  on  by  Cash-payment  alone.  If,  at  any 
time,  a  philosophy  of  Laissez-faire,  Competition  and  Supply-and- 
demand,  start  up  as  the  exponent  of  human  relations,  expect  that 
it  will  soon  end. 

Such  philosophies  will  arise  :  for  man's  philosophies  are  usually 
the  '  supplement  of  his  practice  ,'  some  ornamental  Logic-varnish, 
some  outer  skin  of  Articulate  Intelligence,  with  which  he  strives 
to  render  his  dumb  Instinctive  Doings  presentable  when  they  are 
done.  Such  philosophies  will  arise ;  be  preached  as  Mammon- 
Gospels,  the  ultimate  Evangel  of  the  World;  be  believed,  with 
what  is  called  belief,  with  much  superficial  bluster,  with  a  kind 
of  shallow  satisfaction  real  in  its  way: — but  they  are  ominous 
gospels  !  They  are  the  sure,  and  even  swift,  forerunner  of  great 
changes.  Expect  that  the  old  System  of  Society  is  done,  is  dy- 
ing and  fallen  into  dotage,  when  it  begins  to  rave  in  that  fashion. 
Most  Systems  that  I  have  watched  the  death  of,  for  the  last  three 
thousand  years,  have  gone  just  so.  The  Ideal,  the  True  and 
Noble  that  was  in  them  having  faded  out,  and  nothing  now  re- 
maining but  naked  Egoism,  vulturous  Greediness,  they  cannot 
live  ;  they  are  bound  and  inexorably  ordained  by  the  oldest  Des- 
tinies, Mothers  of  the  Universe,  to  die.  Curious  enough :  they 
thereupon,  as  I  have  pretty  generally  noticed,  devise  some  light 
comfortable  kind  of  '  wine -and  walnuts  philosophy '  for  them- 
selves, this  of  Supply-and -demand  or  another  ;  and  keep  saying, 
during  hours  of  mastication  and  rumination,  which  they  call  hours 
of  meditation  :  "  Soul,  take  thy  ease,  it  is  all  well  that  thou  art  a 


PLUGSON    OF    UNDERSHOT. 


189 


vulture-soul ;"  —  and  pangs  of  dissolution  come  upon  them,  often- 
est  before  they  are  aware  ! 

Cash-payment  never  was,  or  could  except  for  a  few  years  be, 
the  union-bond  of  man  to  man.  Cash  never  yet  paid  one  man 
fully  his  deserts  to  another ;  nor  could  it,  nor  can  it,  now  or 
henceforth  to  the  end  of  the  world.  I  invite  his  Grace  of  Castle- 
Rackrent  to  reflect  on  this  ;  —  does  he  think  that  a  Land  Aris- 
tocracy when  it  becomes  a  Land  Auctioneership  can  have  long  to 
live'?  Or  that  Sliding-scales  will  increase  the  vital  stamina  of  it1? 
The  indomitable  Plugson  too,  of  the  respected  Firm  of  Plugson, 
Hunks  and  Company,  in  St.  Dolly  Undershot,  is  invited  to  reflect 
on  this ;  for  to  him  also  it  will  be  new,  perhaps  even  newer. 
Book-keeping  by  double  entry  is  admirable,  and  records  several 
things  in  an  exact  manner.  But  the  Mother-Destinies  also  keep 
their  Tablets  ;  in  Heaven's  Chancery  also  there  goes  on  a  record- 
ing ;  and  things,  as  my  Moslem  friends  say,  are  '  written  on  the 
iron  leaf.' 

Your  Grace  and  Plugson,  it  is  like,  go  to  Church  occasionally  : 
did  you  never  in  vacant  moments,  with  perhaps  a  dull  parson 
droning  to  you,  glance  into  your  New  Testament,  and  the  cash- 
account  stated  four  times  over,  by  a  kind  of  quadruple  entry,  — in 
the  Four  Gospels  there  ?  I  consider  that  a  cash-account,  and 
balance-statement  of  work  done  and  wages  paid,  worth  attending 
to.  Precisely  such,  though  on  a  smaller  scale,  go  on  at  all  mo- 
ments under  this  Sun  ;  and  the  statement  and  balance  of  them  in 
the  Plugson  Ledgers  and  on  the  Tablets  of  Heaven's  Chancery 
are  discrepant  exceedingly  ;  —  which  ought  really  to  teach,  and 
to  have  long  since  taught,  an  indomitable  common-sense  Plugson 
of  Undershot,  much  more  an  unattackable  w/icommon-sense  Grace 
Gf  Rackrent,  a  thing  or  two  !  —  In  brief,  we  shall  have  to  dismiss 
the  Cash-Gospel  rigorously  into  its  own  place ;  we  shall  have  to 
know,  on  the  threshold,  that  either  there  is  some  infinitely  deeper 
Gospel,  subsidiary,  explanatory  and  daily  and  hourly  corrective, 
to  the  Cash  one  ;  or  else  that  the  Cash  one  itself  and  all  others 
are  fast  travelling  ! 

For  all  human  things  do  require  to  have  an  Ideal  in  them  ;  to 
have  some  Soul  in  them,  as  we  said,  were  it  only  to  keep  the 


190  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Body  unputrefied.  And  wonderful  it  is  to  see  how  the  Ideal  or 
Soul,  place  it  in  what  ugliest  Body  you  may,  will  irradiate  said 
Body  with  its  own  nobleness  ;  will  gradually,  incessantly,  mould, 
modify,  new-form  or  reform  said  ugliest  Body,  and  make  it  at  last 
beautiful,  and  to  a  certain  degree  divine  !  — O,  if  you  could  de- 
throne that  Brute-god  Mammon,  and  put  a  Spirit-god  in  his  place  I 
One  way  or  other,  he  must  and  will  have  to  be  dethroned. 

Fighting,  for  example,  as  I  often  say  to  myself,  Fighting  with 
steel  murder-tools  is  surely  a  much  uglier  operation  than  Work- 
ing, take  it  how  you  will.  Yet  even  of  Fighting,  in  religious 
Abbot  Samson's  days,  see  what  a  Feudalism  there  had  grown,  — 
a  ■  glorious  Chivalry,'  much  besung  down  to  the  present  day. 
Was  not  that  one  of  the  '  impossiblest '  things  ?  Under  the  sky 
is  no  uglier  spectacle  than  two  men  with  clenched  teeth,  and  hell- 
fire  eyes,  hacking  one  another's  flesh  ;  converting  precious  living 
bodies,  and  priceless  living  souls,  into  nameless  masses  of  putres- 
cence, useful  only  for  turnip-manure.  How  did  a  Chivalry  ever 
come  out  of  that ;  how  anything  that  was  not  hideous,  scanda- 
lous, infernal  1  It  will  be  a  question  worth  considering  by  and 
by. 

I  remark,  for  the  present,  only  two  things  :  first,  that  the 
Fighting  itself  was  not,  as  we  rashly  suppose  it,  a  Fighting  with- 
out cause,  but  more  or  less  with  cause.  Man  is  created  to  fight ; 
he  is  perhaps  best  of  all  definable  as  a  born  soldier  ;  his  life  '  a 
battle  and  a  march,'  under  the  right  General.  It  is  forever  indis- 
pensable for  a  man  to  fight :  now  with  Necessity,  with  Barren- 
ness, Scarcity,  with  Puddles,  Bogs,  tangled  Forests,  unkempt 
Cotton  ;  —  now  also  with  the  hallucinations  of  his  poor  fellow 
Men.  Hallucinatory  visions  rise  in  the  head  of  my  poor  fel- 
low man  ;  make  him  claim  over  me  rights  which  are  not  his.  All 
Fighting,  as  we  noticed  long  ago,  is  the  dusty  conflict  of  strengths 
each  thinking  itself  the  strongest,  or,  in  other  words,  the  justest ; 
—  of  Mights  which  do  in  the  long-run,  and  forever  will  in  this 
just  Universe  in  the  long-run,  mean  Rights.  In  conflict  the  per- 
ishable part  of  them,  beaten  sufficiently,  flies  off  into  dust :  this 
process  ended,  appears  the  imperishable,  the  true  and  exact. 

And  now  let  us  remark  a  second  thing  :  how,  in  these  baleful 
operations,  a  noble  devout-hearted  Chevalier  will  comfort  himself, 


PLUGSON    OF    UNDERSHOT.  191 

and  an  ignoble  godless  Bucanier  and  Chactaw  Indian.  Victory  is 
the  aim  of  each.  But  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  noble  man  it  lies 
forever  legible,  that,  as  an  Invisible  Just  God  made  him,  so  will 
and  must  God's  Justice  and  this  only,  were  it  never  so  invisible, 
ultimately  prosper  in  all  controversies  and  enterprises  and  battles 
whatsoever.  What  an  Influence;  ever-present,  —  like  a  Soul  in 
the  rudest  Caliban  of  a  body  ;  like  a  ray  of  Heaven,  and  illumin- 
ative creative  Fiat-Lux,  in  the  wastest  terrestrial  Chaos  !  Blessed 
divine  Influence,  traceable  even  in  the  horror  of  Battlefields  and 
garments  rolled  in  blood :  how  it  ennobles  even  the  Battlefield  ; 
and,  in  place  of  a  Chactaw  Massacre,  makes  it  a  Field  of  Honour ! 
A  Battlefield  too  is  great.  Considered  well,  it  is  a  kind  of  Quin- 
tessence of  Labour  ;  Labour  distilled  into  its  utmost  concentration ; 
the  significance  of  years  of  it  compressed  into  an  hour.  Here  too 
thou  shalt  be  strong,  and  not  in  muscle  only,  if  thou  wouldst  pre- 
vail. Here  too  thou  shalt  be  strong  of  heart,  noble  of  soul ;  thou 
shalt  dread  no  pain  or  death,  thou  shalt  not  love  ease  or  life  ;  in 
rage,  thou  shalt  remember  mercy,  justice;  —  thou  shalt  be  a 
Knight  and  not  a  Chactaw,  if  thou  wouldst  prevail !  It  is  the 
rule  of  all  battles,  against  hallucinating  fellow  Men,  against  un- 
kempt Cotton,  or  whatsoever  battles  they  may  be  which  a  man  in 
this  world  has  to  fight. 

Howel  Davies  dyes  the  West  Indian  Seas  with  blood,  piles  his 
decks  with  plunder ,  approves  himself  the  expertest  Seaman,  the 
daringest  Seafighter  :  but  he  gains  no  lasting  victory,  lasting 
victory  is  not  possible  for  him.  Not,  had  he  fleets  larger  than  the 
combined  British  Navy  all  united  with  him  in  bucaniering.  He, 
once  for  all,  cannot  prosper  in  his  duel.  He  strikes  down  his 
man:  yes;  but  his  man,  or  his  man's  representative,  has  no 
notion  to  lie  struck  down  ;  neither,  though  slain  ten  times,  will  he 
keep  so  lying  ;  —  nor  has  the  Universe  any  notion  to  keep  him  so 
lying !  On  the  contrary,  the  Universe  and  he  have,  at  all  mo- 
ments, all  manner  of  motives  to  start  up  again,  and  desperately 
fight  again.  Your  Napoleon  is  flung  out,  at  last,  to  St.  Helena ; 
the  latter  end  of  him  sternly  compensating  the  beginning.  The 
Bucanier  strikes  down  a  man,  a  hundred  or  a  million  men :  bat 
what  profits  it  1  He  has  one  enemy  never  to  be  struck  down  ; 
nay  two  enemies  :  Mankind  and  the  Maker  of  Men.    On  the  great 


192  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

scale  or  on  the  small,  in  fighting  of  men  or  fighting  of  difficulties, 
I  will  not  embark  my  venture  with  Howel  Davies  :  it  is  not  the 
Bucanier,  it  is  the  Hero  only  that  can  gain  victory,  that  can  do 
more  than  seem  to  succeed.  These  things  will  deserve  meditating  ; 
for  they  apply  to  all  battle  and  soldiership,  all  struggle  and  effort 
whatsoever  in  this  Fig-lit  of  Life.  It  is  a  poor  Gospel,  Cash-Gos- 
pel or  whatever  name  it  have,  that  does  not,  with  clear  tone,  un- 
contradictable,  carrying  conviction  to  all  hearts,  forever  keep  men 
in  mind  of  these  things. 

Unhappily,  my  indomitable  friend  Plugson  of  Undershot  has,  in 
a  great  degree,  forgotten  them  ;  —  as,  alas,  all  the  world  has  ;  as, 
alas,  our  very  Dukes  and  Soul-Overseers  have,  whose  special 
trade  it  was  to  remember  them  !  Hence  these  tears,  —  Plugson, 
who  has  indomitably  spun  Cotton  merely  to  gain  thousands  of 
pounds,  I  have  to  call  as  yet  a  Bucanier  and  Chactaw  ;  till  there 
come  something  better,  still  more  indomitable  from  him.  His 
hundred  Thousand-pound  Notes,  if  there  be  nothing  other,  are  to 
me  but  as  the  hundred  Scalps  in  a  Chactaw  wigwam.  The  blind 
Plugson  :  he  was  a  Captain  of  Industry,  born  member  of  the 
Ultimate  genuine  Aristocracy  of  this  Universe,  could  he  have 
known  it !  These  thousand  men  that  span  and  toiled  round  him, 
they  were  a  regiment  whom  he  had  enlisted,  man  by  man  ;  to 
make  war  on  a  very  genuine  enemy  :  Barenness  of  back,  and  dis- 
obedient Cotton-fibre,  which  will  not,  unless  forced  to  it,  consent 
to  cover  bare  backs.  Here  is  a  most  genuine  enemy  ;  over  whom 
all  creatures  will  wish  him  victory.  He  enlisted  his  thousand 
men  ;  said  to  them,  "  Come,  brothers,  let  us  have  a  dash  at  Cot- 
ton !  "  They  follow  with  cheerful  shout;  they  gain  such  a 
victory  over  Cotton  as  the  Earth  has  to  admire  and  clap  hands  at : 
but,  alas,  it  is  yet  only  of  the  Bucanier  or  Chactaw  sort,  —  as 
good  as  no  victory  !  Foolish  Plugson  of  St.  Dorcas  Undershot : 
does  he  hope  to  become  illustrious  by  hanging  up  the  scalps  in  his 
wigwam,  the  hundred  thousands  at  his  banker's,  and  saying, 
Behold  my  scalps  ?  Why,  Plugson,  even  thy  own  host  is  all  in 
mutiny  :  Cotton  is  conquered  ;  but  the  '  bare  backs  '  —  are  worse 
covered  than  ever  !  Indomitable  Plugson,  thou  must  cease  to  be 
a  Chactaw  ;  thou  and  others  ;  thou  thyself,  if  no  other  ! 

Did  William  the  Norman  Bastard,  or  any  of  his  Taillefers, 


PLUGSON     OF     UNDERSHOT.  193 

Jroncutters,  manage  so?  Ironcutter,  at  the  end  of  the  campaign, 
did  not  turn  off  his  thousand  fighters,  but  said  to  them  :  "  Noble 
fighters,  this  is  the  land  we  have  gained  ;  be  I  Lord  in  it,  —  what 
we  will  call  Law-ward,  maintainer  and  keeper  of  Heaven's  Laws : 
be  I  Law-ward,  or  in  brief  orthoepy  Lord  in  it,  and  be  ye  Loyal 
Men  around  me  in  it ;  and  we  will  stand  by  one  another,  as  sol- 
diers round  a  captain,  for  again  we  shall  have  need  of  one  an- 
other!  "  Plugson,  bucanier-like,  says  to  them:  "  Noble  spin- 
ners, this  is  the  Hundred  Thousand  we  have  gained,  wherein  I 
mean  to  dwell  and  plant  vineyards  ;  the  hundred  thousand  is  mine, 
the  three  and  sixpence  daily  was  yours  :  adieu,  noble  spinners  ; 
drink  my  health  with  this  groat  each,  whicli  I  give  you  over  and 
above  !  "  The  entirely  unjust  Captain  of  Industry,  say  I  ;  not 
Chevalier,  but  Bucanier  !  '  Commercial  Law  '  does  indeed  acquit 
him,  asks,  with  wide  eyes,  What  else?  So  too  Howel  Davies 
asks,  Was  it  not  according  to  the  strictest  Bucanier  Custom? 
Did  I  depart  in  any  jot  or  tittle  from  the  Laws  of  the  Bucaniers  ? 

After  all,  money,  as  they  say,  is  miraculous.  Plugson  wanted 
victory  ;  as  Chevaliers  and  Bucaniers,  and  all  men  alike  do.  He 
found  money  recognised,  by  the  whole  world  with  one  assent, 
as  the  true  symbol,  exact  equivalent  and  synonym  of  victory  ;  — 
and  here  we  have  him,  a  grimbrowed,  indomitable  Bucanier, 
coming  home  to  us  with  a  '  victory,'  which  the  whole  world  is 
ceasing  to  clap  hands  at !  The  whole  world,  taught  somewhat 
impressively,  is  beginning  to  recognise  that  such  victory  is  but 
half  a  victory  ;  and  that  now,  if  it  please  the  Powers,  we  must  — 
have  the  other  half ! 

Money  is  miraculous.  What  miraculous  facilities  has  it  yielded, 
will  it  yield  us  ;  but  also  what  never-imagined  confusions,  obscur- 
ations has  it  brought  in  ;  down  almost  to  total  extinction  of  the 
moral-sense  in  large  masses  of  mankind  !  '  Protection  of  pro- 
perty,' of  what  is  '  mme,'  means  with  most  men  protection  of 
money,  —  the  thing  which,  had  I  a  thousand  padlocks  over  it,  is 
least  of  all  mine ;  is,  in  a  manner,  scarcely  worth  calling  mine  ! 
The  symbol  shall  be  held  sacred,  defended  everywhere  with  tip- 
staves, ropes  and  gibbets ;  the  thing  signified  shall  be  composedly 
cast  to  the  dogs.  A  human  being  who  has  worked  with  human 
beings  clears  all  scores  with  them,  cuts  himself  with  triumphant 
17 


194  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

completeness  forever  loose  from  them,  by  paying  down  certain 
shillings  and  pounds.  Was  it  not  the  wages  I  promised  you? 
There  they  are,  to  the  last  sixpence,  —  according  to  the  Laws  of 
the  Bucaniers  !  — Yes,  indeed  ;  — and,  at  such  times,  it  becomes 
imperatively  necessary  to  ask  all  persons,  bucaniers  and  others, 
Whether  these  same  respectable  Laws  of  the  Bucaniers  are  writ- 
ten on  God's  eternal  Heavens  at  all,  on  the  inner  Heart  of  Man 
at  all ;  or  on  the  respectable  Bucanier  Logbook  merely,  for  the 
convenience  of  bucaniering  merely'?  What  a  question  ;  — whereat 
Westminster  Hall  shudders  to  its  driest  parchment ;  and  on  the 
dead  wigs  each  particular  horsehair  stands  on  end ! 

The  Laws  of  Laissez-faire,  O  Westminster,  the  laws  of  industrial 
Captain  and  industrial  Soldier,  how  much  more  of  idle  Captain  and 
industrial  Soldier,  will  need  to  be  remodelled,  and  modified,  and  rec- 
tified in  a  hundred  and  a  hundred  ways,  —  and  not  in  the  Sliding- 
scale  direction ,  but  in  the  totally  opposite  one  !  With  two  million  in- 
dustrial Soldiers  already  sitting  in  Bastilles,  and  five  million  pining 
on  potatoes,  methinks  Westminster  cannot  begin  too  soon  !  —  A 
man  has  other  obligations  laid  on  him,  in  God's  Universe,  than 
the  payment  of  cash  :  these  also  Westminster,  if  it  will  continue 
to  exist  and  have  board-wages,  must  contrive  to  take  some  charge 
of:  — by  Westminster  or  by  another,  they  must  and  will  be  taken 
charge  of;  be,  with  whatever  difficulty,  got  articulated,  got  en- 
forced, and  to  a  certain  approximate  extent,  put  in  practice.  And, 
as  I  say,  it  cannot  be  too  soon  !  For  Mammonism,  left  to  itself, 
has  become  Midas-eared  ;  and  with  all  its  gold  mountains  sits 
starving  for  want  of  bread  :  and  Dilettantism  with  its  partridge- 
nets,  in  this  extremely  earnest  Universe  of  ours,  is  playing  some- 
what too  high  a  game.  '  A  man  by  the  very  look  of  him  prom- 
ises so  much  :  '  yes  ;  and  by  the  rent-roll  of  him  does  he  promise 
nothing  ?  — 

Alas,  what  a  business  will  this  be,  which  our  Continental 
friends,  groping  this  long  while  somewhat  absurdly  about  it  and 
about  it,  call '  Organisation  of  Labour  , '  —  which  must  be  taken  out 
of  the  hands  of  absurd  windy  persons,  and  put  into  the  hands  of 
wise,  laborious,  modest  and  valiant  men,  to  begin  with  it  straight- 
way :  to  proceed  with  it  and  succeed  in  it  more  and  more,  if  Eu- 


PLUGSON    OF    UNDERSHOT.  195 

rope,  at  any  rate  if  England,  is  to  continue  habitable  much  longer. 
Looking  at  the  kind  of  most  noble  Corn-Law  Dukes  or  Practical 
Duces  we  have,  and  also  of  right  reverend  Soul-Overseers,  Christ- 
ian Spiritual  Duces  '  on  a  minimum  of  four  thousand  five  hundred,' 
one's  hopes  are  a  little  chilled.  Courage,  nevertheless  ;  there 
are  many  brave  men  in  England  !  My  indomitable  Plugson,  — 
nay  is  there  not  even  in  thee  some  hope  1  Thou  art  hitherto  a 
Bucanier,  as  it  was  written  and  prescribed  for  thee  by  an  evil 
world  :  but  in  that  grim  brow,  in  that  indomitable  heart  which 
can  conquer  Cotton,  do  there  not  perhaps  lie  other  ten  times  no- 
bler conquests  ? 


CHAPTER  XI. 


LABOUR. 


For  there  is  a  perennial  nobleness,  and  even  sacredness,  in  Work. 
Were  he  never  so  benighted,  forgetful  of  his  high  calling,  there 
is  always  hope  in  a  man  that  actually  and  earnestly  works :  in 
Idleness  alone  is  there  perpetual  despair.  Work,  never  so  Mam- 
monish, mean  is  in  communication  with  Nature  ;  the  real  desire 
to  get  Work  done  will  itself  lead  one  more  and  more  to  truth,  to 
Nature's  appointments  and  regulations,  which  are  truth. 

The  latest  Gospel  in  this  world  is,  Know  thy  work  and  do  it. 
1  Know  thyself:'  long  enough  has  that  poor  c  self  of  thine  tor- 
mented thee  ;  thou  wilt  never  get  to  '  know  '  it,  I  believe  ! 
Think  it  not  thy  business,  this  of  knowing  thyself;  thou  art  an 
unknowable  individual :  know  what  thou  canst  work  at ;  and  work 
at  it,  like  a  Hercules !     That  will  be  thy  better  plan. 

It  has  been  written,  '  an  endless  significance  lies  in  Work  ;'  a 
man  perfects  himself  by  working.  Foul  jungles  are  cleared 
away,  fair  seedfields  rise  instead,  and  stately  cities  ;  and  withal 
the  man  himself  first  ceases  to  be  a  jungle  and  foul  unwholesome 
desert  thereby.  Consider  how,  even  in  the  meanest  sorts  of 
Labour,  the  whole  soul  of  a  man  is  composed  into  a  kind  of  real 
harmony,  the  instant  he  sets  himself  to  work  !  Doubt,  Desire, 
Sorrow,  Remorse,  Indignation,  Despair  itself,  all  these  like  hell- 
dogs  lie  beleaguering  the  soul  of  the  poor  dayworker,  as  of  every 
man  :  but  he  bends  himself  with  free  valour  against  his  task, 
and  all  these  are  stilled,  all  these  shrink  murmuring  far  off 
into  their  caves.  The  man  is  now  a  man.  The  blessed  glow 
of  Labour  in  him,  is  it  not  as  purifying  fire  wherein  all  poison 
is  burnt  up,  and  of  sour  smoke  itself  there  is  made  bright  blessed 
flame! 


LABOUR.  197 

Destiny,  on  the  whole,  has  no  other  way  of  cultivating-  us.  A 
formless  chaos,  once  set  it  revolving,  grows  round  and  ever 
rounder  ;  ranges  itself,  by  mere  force  of  gravity,  into  strata,  spher- 
ical courses  ;  is  no  longer  a  chaos  but  a  round  compacted  World. 
What  would  become  of  the  earth  did  she  cease  to  revolve  1  In 
the  poor  old  Earth,  so  long  as  she  revolves,  all  inequalities,  irreg- 
ularities disperse  themselves  ;  all  irregularities  are  incessantly 
becoming  regular.  Hast  thou  looked  on  the  Potter's  wheel ;  — 
one  of  the  venerablest  objects  ;  old  as  the  prophet  Ezekiel  and  far 
older?  Rude  lumps  of  clay,  how  they  spin  themselves  up,  by 
mere  quick  whirling,  into  beautiful  circular  dishes.  And  fancy 
the  most  assiduous  Potter,  but  without  his  wheel  ;  reduced  to 
make  dishes,  or  rather  amorphous  botches,  by  mere  kneeding  and 
baking  !  Even  such  a  Potter  were  Destiny  with  a  human  soul 
that  would  rest  and  lie  at  ease,  that  would  not  work  and  spin  ! 
Of  an  idle  unrevoking  man,  the  kindest  Destiny,  like  the  most 
assiduous  Potter  without  wheel,  can  bake  and  knead  nothing  other 
than  a  botch  ;  —  let  her  spend  on  him  what  expensive  colouring, 
what  gilding  and  enameling  she  will,  he  is  but  a  botch.  Not  a 
dish  ;  no,  a  bulging,  kneaded,  crooked,  shambling,  squint-cornered 
amorphous  botch,  —  a  mere  enameled  vessel  of  dishonour  !  Let 
the  idle  think  of  this. 

Blessed  is  he  who  has  found  his  work  ;  let  him  ask  no  other 
blessedness.  He  has  a  work,  a  Life-purpose  ;  he  has  found  it, 
and  will  follow  it !  How  as  a  free-flowing  channel,  dug  and  torn 
by  noble  force  through  the  sour  mud-swamp  of  one's  existence, 
like  an  ever  deepening  river  there,  it  runs  and  flows  ;  —  draining 
off  the  sour  festering  water,  gradually  from  the  root  of  the  re- 
motest grass-blade  ;  making  instead  of  pestilential  swamp  a  green 
fruitful  meadow,  with  its  clear-flowing  stream.  How  blessed  for 
the  meadow  itself,  let  the  stream  and  its  value  be  great  or  small ! 
Labour  is  Life  ;  from  the  inmost  heart  of  the  Worker  rises  his 
god-given  Force,  the  sacred  celestial  Life-essence  breathed  into 
him  by  Almighty  God  ;  from  his  inmost  heart  awakens  him  to  all 
nobleness,  —  to  all  knowledge,  '  self-knowledge'  and  much  else, 
so  soon  as  Work  fitly  begins.  Knowledge?  The  Knowledge 
that  will  hold  good  in  working,  cleave  thou  to  that ;  for  Nature 
herself  accredits  that,  says  Yea  to  that.  Properly  thou  hast  no 
17* 


198  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

other  knowledge  but  what  thou  hast  got  by  working  :  the  rest  is 
yet  all  a  hypothesis  of  knowledge,  a  thing  to  be  argued  of  in 
schools,  a  thing  floating  in  the  clouds,  in  endless  logic-vortices, 
till  we  try  it  and  fix  it.  '  Doubt  of  whatever  kind  can  be  ended 
by  Action  alone.' 

And  again  hast  thou  valued  Patience,  Courage,  Perseverance, 
Openness  to  light ;  readiness  to  own  thyself  mistaken,  to  do  better 
next  time  ?  All  these,  all  virtues,  in  wrestling  with  the  dim  brute 
powers  of  Fact,  in  ordering  of  thy  fellows  in  such  wrestle,  there 
and  elsewhere  not  at  all,  thou  wilt  continually  learn.  Set  down 
a  brave  Sir  Christopher  in  the  middle  of  black  ruined  Stoneheaps, 
of  foolish  unarchitectural  Bishops,  redtape  Officials,  idle  Nell- 
Gwyn  Defenders  of  the  Faith ;  and  see  whether  he  will  ever 
raise  a  Paul's  Cathedral  out  of  all  that,  yea  or  no  !  Rough,  rude, 
contradictory  are  all  things  and  persons,  from  the  mutinous  ma- 
sons and  Irish  hodmen,  up  to  the  idle  Nell-Gwyn  Defenders,  to 
blustering  redtape  Officials,  foolish  unarchitectural  Bishops.  All 
these  things  and  persons  are  there  not  for  Christopher's  sake  and 
his  Cathedral's  ;  they  are  there  for  their  own  sake  mainly  ! 
Christopher  will  have  to  conquer  and  constrain  all  these,  —if  he 
be  able.  All  these  are  against  him.  Equitable  Nature  herself, 
who  carries  her  mathematics  and  architectonics  not  on  the  face  of 
her,  but  deep  in  the  hidden  heart  of  her,  —  Nature  herself,  is  but 
partially  for  him  ;  will  be  wholly  against  him,  if  he  constrain  her 
not!  His  very  money,  where  is  it  to  come  from?  The  pious 
munificence  of  England  lies  far-scattered  distant,  unable  to  speak, 
and  say  "lam  here  ;  "  — must  be  spoken  to  before  it  can  speak. 
Pious  munificence,  and  all  help,  is  so  silent,  invisible,  like  the 
gods  ;  impediment,  contradictions  manifold  are  so  loud  and  near  ! 
O  brave  Sir  Christopher,  trust  thou  in  those  notwithstanding,  and 
front  all  these;  understand  all  these,  by  valiant  patience,  noble 
effort,  insight,  by  man's-strength,  vanquish  and  compel  all  these, 
—  and,  on  the  whole,  strike  down  victoriously  the  last  topstone  of 
that  Paul's  Edifice  ;  thy  monument  for  certain  centuries,  the 
stamp  '  Great  Man '  impressed  very  legibly  on  Portland-stone 
there !  — 

Yes,  all  manner  of  help,  and  pious  response  from  Men  or  Na- 


199 


ture,  is  always  what  we  call  silent ;  cannot  speak  or  come  to  light, 
till  it  be  seen,  till  it  be  spoken  to.  Every  noble  work  is  at  first 
'  impossible.'  In  very  truth,  for  every  noble  work  the  possibilities 
will  lie  diffused  through  Immensity  ;  inarticulate,  undiscoverable 
except  to  faith.  Like  Gideon  thou  shalt  spread  out  thy  fleece  at 
the  door  of  thy  tent ;  see  whether  under  the  wide  arch  of  Heaven 
there  be  any  bounteous  moisture,  or  none.  Thy  heart  and  life- 
purpose  shall  be  as  a  miraculous  Gideon's  fleece  spread  out  in 
silent  appeal  to  Heaven  ;  and  from  the  kind  Immensities,  what 
from  the  poor  unkind  Localities  and  town  and  country  Parishes 
there  never  could,  blessed  dew-moisture  to  suffice  thee  shall  have 
fallen  ! 

Work  is  of  a  religious  nature  :  —  work  is  of  a  brave  nature  ; 
which  it  is  the  aim  of  all  religion  to  be.  '  All  work  of  man  is  as 
the  swimmer's  :  a  waste  ocean  threatens  to  devour  him  ;  if  he 
front  it  not  bravely,  it  will  keep  its  word.  By  incessant  wise  defi- 
ances of  it,  lusty  rebuke  and  buffet  of  it,  behold  how  it  loyally 
supports  him,  bears  him  as  its  conqueror  along.  '  It  is  so,'  says 
Goethe,  '  with  all  things  that  man  undertakes  in  this  world.' 

Brave  Sea-Captain,  Norse  Sea-King,  —  Columbus,  my  hero, 
royallest  Sea-King  of  all !  it  is  no  friendly  environment  this  of 
thine  in  the  waste  deep  waters  ;  around  thee  mutinous  discouraged 
souls,  behind  thee  disgrace  and  ruin,  before  thee  the  unpenetrated 
veil  of  Night.  Brother,  these  wild  Water-Mountains,  bounding 
from  their  deep  bases  (ten  miles  deep,  I  am  told),  are  not  entirely 
there  on  thy  behalf!  Meseems  they  have  other  work  than  float- 
ing thee  forward  :  —  and  the  huge  Winds,  that  sweep  from  Ursa 
Major  to  the  Tropics  and  Equators,  dancing  their  giant-waltz 
through  the  Kingdoms  of  Chaos  and  Immensity,  they  care  little 
about  filling  rightly  or  filling  wrongly  the  small  shoulder-of-mutton 
sails  in  this  cockle  skiff  of  thine  !  Thou  art  not  among  articu- 
late-speaking friends,  my  brother  ;  thou  art  among  immeasurable 
dumb  monsters,  tumbling,  howling  wide  as  the  wTorld  here.  Se- 
cret, far  off,  invisible  to  all  hearts  but  thine,  there  lies  a  help  in 
them  :  see  how  thou  wilt  get  at  that.  Patiently  thou  wilt  wait 
till  the  mad  Southwester  spend  itself,  saving  thyself  by  dexterous 
science  of  defence,  the  while  ;  valiantly,  with  swift  decision,  wilt 
thou  strike  in,  when  the  favouring  East,  the  Possible,  springs  up. 


200  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Mutiny  of  men  thou  wilt  sternly  repress  ;  weakness,  despond- 
ency, thou  wilt  cheerily  encourage  :  thou  wilt  swallow  down 
complaint,  unreason,  weariness,  weakness  of  others  and  thyself; 
—  how  much  wilt  thou  swallow  down  !  There  shall  be  a  depth 
of  Silence  in  thee,  deeper  than  this  Sea,  which  is  but  ten  miles 
deep  :  a  Silence  unsoundable  ;  known  to  God  only.  Thou  shalt 
be  a  Great  Man.  Yes,  my  World-Soldier,  thou  of  the  World 
Marine-Service,  —  thou  wilt  have  to  be  greater  than  this  tumult- 
uous unmeasured  world  here  round  thee  is  :  thou,  in  thy  strong 
soul,  as  with  wrestler's  arms,  shalt  embrace  it,  harness  it  down  ; 
and  make  it  bear  thee  on, — to  New  Americas,  or  whither  God 
wills  ! 


CHAPTER    XII. 


REWARD. 


1  Religion,'  I  said,  for  properly  speaking  all  true  Work  is  Re- 
ligion ;  and  whatsoever  Religion  is  not  work  may  go  and  dwell 
among  the  Brahmins,  Antinomians,  Spinning  Dervishes,  or  where 
it  will ;  with  me  it  shall  have  no  harbour.  Admirable  was  that 
of  the  old  Monks,  '  Laborare  est  Orare,  Work  is  Worship.' 

Older  than  all  preached  Gospels  was  this  unpreached,  inarticu- 
late, but  ineradicable,  forever-enduring  Gospel  :  Work,  and 
therein  have  well-being.  Man,  Son  of  Earth  and  of  Heaven, 
lies  there  not,  in  the  innermost  heart  of  thee,  a  spirit  of  active 
Method,  a  Force  for  work;  —  and  burns  like  a  painfully  smoul- 
dering fire,  giving  thee  no  rest  till  thou  unfold  it,  till  thou  write 
it  down  in  beneficent  Facts  around  thee  !  What  is  immethodic, 
waste,  thou  shalt  make  methodic,  regulated,  arable  ;  obedient  and 
productive  to  thee.  Wheresoever  thou  findest  Disorder,  there  is 
thy  eternal  enemy  ;  attack  him  swiftly,  subdue  him,  make  Order 
of  him,  the  subject  not  of  Chaos,  but  of  Intelligence,  Divinity, 
and  Thee  !  The  thistle  that  grows  in  thy  path,  dig  it  out,  that  a 
blade  of  useful  grass,  a  drop  of  nourishing  milk,  may  grow  there 
instead.  The  waste  Cotton-shrub,  gather  its  waste  white  down, 
spin  it,  weave  it ;  that  in  place  of  idle  litter,  there  may  be  folded 
webs,  and  the  naked  skin  of  man  be  covered. 

But  above  all,  when  thou  findest  Ignorance,  Stupidity,  Brute- 
mindedness,  —  yes,  there,  with  or  without  Church-tithes  and 
shovel  hat,  with  or  without  Talfourd-Mahon  Copyrights,  or  were 
it  with  mere  dungeons  and  gibbets  and  crosses,  attack  it,  I  say, 
smite  it  wisely,  unweariedly,  and  rest  not  while  thou  livest  and  it 
lives,  but  smite,  smite,  in  the  name  of  God  !  The  highest  God, 
as  I  understand  it,  does  audibly  so  command  thee  ;  still  audibly, 


202  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

if  thou  have  ears  to  hear.  He,  even  He,  with  his  w?ispoken 
voice,  awfuller  than  any  Sinai  thunders  or  syllabled  speech  of 
Whirlwinds  ;  for  the  Silence  of  deep  Eternities,  of  Worlds  from 
beyond  the  morning-stars,  does  it  not  speak  to  thee?  The  unborn 
Ages  ;  the  old  Graves  with  their  long-mouldering  dust,  the  very 
tears  that  wetted  it  now  all  dry, — do  not  these  speak  to  thee, 
what  ear  hath  not  heard  1  The  deep  Death-kingdoms,  the  stars 
in  their  never-resting  courses,  all  Space  and  all  Time,  proclaims 
it  to  thee  in  continual  silent  admonition.  Thou  too,  if  ever  man 
should,  shalt  work  while  it  is  called  To-day.  For  the  Night 
cometh  wherein  no  man  can  work. 

All  true  work  is  sacred  ;  in  all  true  Work,  were  it  but  true 
hand-labour,  there  is  something  of  divineness.  Labour,  wide  as 
the  Earth,  has  its  summit  in  Heaven.  Sweat  of  the  brow ;  and 
up  from  that  to  sweat  of  the  brain,  sweat  of  the  heart,  which  in- 
cludes all  Kepler  calculations,  Newton  meditations,  all  Sciences, 
all  spoken  Epics,  all  acted  Heroisms,  Martyrdoms,  —  up  to  that 
'  Agony  of  bloody  sweat,'  which  all  men  have  called  divine  !  O 
brother,  if  this  is  not  '  worship,'  then  I  say,  the  more  piety  for 
worship  ;  for  this  is  the  noblest  thing  yet  discovered  under  God's 
sky.  Who  art  thou  that  complainest  of  thy  life  of  toil  ?  Com- 
plain not.  Look  up,  my  wearied  brother ;  see  thy  fellow  Work- 
men there,  in  God's  Eternity  ;  surviving  there,  they  alone  surviv- 
ing :  sacred  Band  of  the  Immortals,  celestial  Body-guard  of  the 
Empire  of  Mankind.  Even  in  the  weak  Human  Memory  they 
survive  so  long,  as  saints,  as  heroes,  as  gods  ;  they  alone  surviv- 
ing ;  peopling,  they  alone,  the  unmeasured  solitudes  of  Time  ?  To 
thee  Heaven,  though  severe,  is  not  unkind;  Heaven  is  kind, — 
as  a  noble  mother  ;  as  that  Spartan  mother,  saying  while  she 
gave  her  son  his  shield,  "With  it,  my  son,  or  upon  it !  "  Thou 
too  shalt  return  home  in  honour,  —  to  thy  far  distant  home,  in  hon- 
our ;  doubt  it  not,  —  if  in  the  battle  thou  keep  thy  shield  !  Thou, 
in  the  Eternities  and  deepest  Death-kingdoms,  art  not  an  alien  ; 
thou  everywhere  art  a  denizen  !  Complain  not ;  the  very  Spar- 
tans did  not  complain. 

And  who  art  thou  that  braggest  of  thy  Life  of  Idleness  ;  com- 
placently shewest  thy  bright  gilt  equipages  ;  sumptuous  cushions ; 
appliances  for  folding  of  the  hands  to  mere  sleep  ?     Looking  up, 


203 


looking  down,  around,  behind  or  before,  discernest  thou,  if  it  be 
not  in  Mayfair  alone,  any  idle  hero,  saint,  god,  or  even  devil? 
Not  a  vestige  of  one.  In  the  Heavens,  in  the  Earth,  in  the  waters 
under  the  Earth,  is  none  like  unto  thee.  Thou  art  an  original 
figure  in  this  creation  ;  a  denizen  in  Mayfair  alone,  in  this  extra- 
ordinary Century  or  Half-century  alone  !  One  monster  there  is 
in  the  world  :  the  idle  man.  What  is  his  '  religion  1  '  That  Na- 
ture is  a  Phantasm,  where  cunning  beggary  or  thievery  may 
sometimes  find  good  victual.  That  God  is  a  lie  ;  and  that  Man 
and  his  Life  are  a  lie.  Alas,  alas,  who  of  us  is  there  that  can 
say,  I  have  worked  1  The  faithfullest  of  us  are  unprofitable  ser- 
vants ;  the  faithfullest  of  us  know  that  best.  The  faithfullest  of 
us  may  say,  with  sad  and  true  old  Samuel,  "  Much  of  my  life  has 
been  trifled  away  !  "  But  he  that  has,  and  except  '  on  public  oc- 
casions,' professes  to  have,  no  function  but  that  of  going  idle  in  a 
graceful  or  graceless  manner,  and  of  begetting  sons  to  go  idle  ; 
and  to  address  Chief  Spinners  and  Diggers,  who  at  least  are  spin- 
ning and  digging,  "  Ye  scandalous  persons  who  produce  too 
much  " — My  Corn-Law  friends,  on  what  imaginary  still  richer 
Eldorados,  and  true  iron-spikes  with  law  of  Gravitation,  are  ye 
rushing  ! 

As  to  the  Wages  of  work  there  might  innumerable  things  be 
said  ;  there  will  and  must  yet  innumerable  things  be  said  and 
spoken,  in  St.  Stephen's  and  out  of  St.  Stephen's  ;  and  gradually 
not  a  few  things  be  ascertained  and  written,  on  Law-paichment, 
concerning  this  very  matter  :  — '  Fair  day's-wages  for  a  fair  day's- 
work  '  is  the  most  unrefusable  demand  !  Money-wages  '  to  the 
extent  of  keeping  your  worker  alive  that  he  may  work  more  ; ' 
these,  unless  you  mean  to  dismiss  him  straightway  out  of  this 
world,  are  indispensable  alike  to  the  noblest  worker  and  to  the 
least  noble  ! 

One  thing  only  I  will  say  here,  in  special  reference  to  the  for- 
mer class,  the  noble  and  noblest ;  but  throwing  light  on  all  the 
other  classes  and  their  arrangements  of  this  difficult  matter  :  The 
wages  of  every  noble  work  do  yet  lie  in  Heaven  or  else  Nowhere. 
Not  in  Bank-of-England  bills,  in  Owen's  Labour-bank,  or  any  the 
most  improved  establishment  of  banking  and  money-changing, 
needst  thou,  heroic  soul,  present  thy  account  of  earnings.     Hu- 


204  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

man  banks,  and  labour  banks  know  thee  not ;  or  know  thee  after 
generations  and  centuries  have  passed  away,  and  thou  art  clean 
gone  from  'rewarding,'  —  all  manner  of  bank-drafts,  shop-tills, 
and  Downing-street  Exchequers  lying  very  invisible,  so  far  from 
thee  !  Nay,  at  bottom,  dost  thou  need  any  reward  ?  Was  it  thy 
aim  and  life-purpose  to  be  filled  with  good  things  for  thy  heroism, 
to  have  a  life  of  pomp  and  ease,  and  be  what  men  call  '  happy ' 
in  this  world,  or  in  any  other  world?  I  answer  for  thee  delibe- 
rately, No.  The  whole  spiritual  secret  of  the  new  epoch  lies  in 
this,  that  thou  canst  answer  for  thyself,  with  thy  whole  clearness 
of  head  and  heart,  deliberately,  No  ! 

My  brother,  the  brave  man  has  to  give  his  life  away.  Give  it, 
I  advise  thee  ;  —  thou  dost  not  expect  to  sell  thy  Life  in  an  ade- 
quate manner?  What  price,  for  example,  wrould  content  thee? 
The  just  price  of  thy  Life  to  thee,  —  w*hy,  God's  entire  Creation 
to  thyself,  the  whole  Universe  of  Space,  the  whole  Eternity  of 
Time,  and  what  they  hold  :  that  is  the  price  which  wrould  con- 
tent thee  ;  that,  and  if  thou  wilt  be  candid,  nothing  short  of  that! 
It  is  thy  all ;  and  for  it  thou  wrouldst  have  all.  Thou  art  an  un- 
reasonable mortal ;  —  or  rather  thou  art  a  poor  infinite  mortal, 
who,  in  thy  narrow  clay-prison  here,  seemest  so  unreasonable  ! 
Thou  wilt  never  sell  thy  Life,  or  any  part  of  thy  Life,  in  a  satis- 
factory manner.  Give  it,  like  a  royal  heart ;  let  the  price  be 
Nothing  :  thou  hast  then  in  a  certain  sense,  got  all  for  it !  The 
heroic  man,  —  and  is  not  every  man,  God  be  thanked,  a  potential 
hero?  —  has  to  do  so,  in  all  times  and  circumstances.  In  the 
most  heroic  age,  as  in  the  most  unheroic,  he  wdll  have  to  say,  as 
Burns  said  proudly  and  humbly  of  his  little  Scottish  Songs,  little 
dew  drops  of  celestial  Melody  in  an  age  when  so  much  was  un- 
melodious  :  "By  Heaven,  they  shall  either  be  invaluable  or  of 
no  value  ;  I  do  not  need  your  guineas  for  them  !  "  It  is  an  element 
which  should  and  must  enter  deeply  into  all  settlements  of  wages 
here  below,  They  never  will  be  '  satisfactory '  otherwise  ;  they 
cannot,  O  Mammon  Gospel,  they  never  can  !  Money  for  my  lit- 
tle piece  of  work  '  to  the  extent  that  will  allow  me  to  keep  work- 
ing ;  '  yes,  this,  —  unless  you  mean  that  I  shall  go  my  ways 
before  the  work  is  all  taken  out  of  me  :   but  as  to  '  wages  '  —  !  — 

On  the  whole,  we  do  entirely  agree  with  those  old  Monks,  La- 


205 


borare  est  Orare ;  in  a  thousand  senses,  from  one  end  of  it  to  the 
other,  true  Works's  Worship.  He  that  works,  whatsoever  be  his 
work,  he  bodies  forth  the  form  of  Things  Unseen  ;  a  small  Poet 
every  worker  is.  The  idea,  were  it  but  of  his  poor  Delf  Platter, 
how  much  more  of  his  Epic  Poem,  is  as  yet  'seen,'  half-seen, 
only  by  himself;  to  all  others  it  is  a  thing  unseen,  impossible  ; 
to  Nature  herself  it  is  a  thing  unseen,  a  thing  which  never  hith- 
erto was  ;  — very  '  impossible,'  for  it  is  as  yet  a  No-thing  !  The 
Unseen  Powers  had  need  to  watch  over  such  a  man  ;  he  works 
in  and  for  the  Unseen.  Alas,  if  he  look  to  the  Seen  Powers  only, 
he  may  as  well  quit  the  business  ;  his  No-thing  will  never  rightly 
issue  as  a  Thing,  but  as  a  Deseeptivity,  a  Sham-thing,  — which 
it  had  better  not  do  ! 

Thy  No-thing  of  an  Intended  Poem,  O  Poet  who  hast  looked 
merely  to  reviewers,  copy  rights,  booksellers,  popularities,  behold 
it  has  not  yet  become  a  thing,  —  for  the  truth  is  not  in  it !  Though 
printed,  hotpressed,  reviewed,  celebrated,  sold  to  the  twentieth 
edition:  what  is  all  that  ?  The  thing,  in  philosophical,  uncom- 
mercial language,  is  still  a  No-thing,  mostly  semblance  and  de- 
ceptive of  the  right; — benign  Oblivion  incessantly  gnawing  at 
it,  impatient  till  Chaos  to  which  it  belongs  do  reabsorb  it !  — 
He  who  takes  not  counsel  of  the  Unseen  and  Silent,  from  him 
will  never  come  real  visibility  and  speech.  Thou  must  descend 
to  the  Mothers,  to  the  Manes,  and  Hercules-like  long  suffer  and 
labour  there,  wouldst  thou  emerge  with  victory  into  the  Sunlight. 
As  in  battle  and  the  shock  of  war,  —  for  is  not  this  a  battle?  thou 
too  shalt  fear  no  pain  or  death,  shalt  love  no  ease  of  life  ;  the 
voice  of  festive  Lubberlands,  the  noise  of  Greedy  Acheron  shall 
alike  lie  silent  under  thy  victorious  feet.  Thy  work  like  Dante's, 
shall  '  make  thee  lean  for  many  years.'  The  world  and  its  wa- 
ges, its  criticisms,  counsel,  helps,  impediments,  shall  be  as  a 
waste  ocean  flood ;  the  chaos  through  which  thou  art  to  swim  and 
sail.  Not  the  waste  waves  and  their  weedy  gulf-streams,  shalt 
thou  take  for  guidance  :  thy  star  alone,  —  Se  tu  segui  tua  stetta! 
Thy  star  alone,  now  clear-beaming  over  Chaos,  nay  now  by  fits 
gone  out,  disastrously  eclipsed  :  thus  only  shalt  thou  strive  to 
follow.  0,  it  is  a  business,  as  I  fancy,  that  of  weltering  your 
way  through  Chaos  and  the  murk  of  Hell !  Green-eyed  dragons 
18 


206  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

watching  you,  three  headed  Cerberuses,  —  not  without  sympathy 
of  their  sort!  "  Eccovi  Tuom  ch'e  stato  aJV  Inferno."  For  in 
fine,  as  Poet  Dryden  says,  you  do  walk  hand  in  hand  with  sheer 
Madness,  all  the  way,  —  who  is  by  no  means  pleasant  company  ! 
you  look  fixedly  into  Madness,  and  her  undiscovered,  boundless, 
bottomless  Night-Empire  ;  that  you  may  extort  new  Wisdom 
out  of  it,  as  an  Eurydice  from  Tartarus.  The  higher  the  Wis- 
dom the  closer  was  its  neighbourhood  and  kindred  with  mere  In- 
sanity ;  literally  so  ;  —  and  thou  wilt,  with  a  speechless  feeling, 
observe  how  highest  Wisdom,  struggling  up  into  this  world,  has 
oftentimes  carried  such  tinctures  and  adhesions  of  Insanity  still 
cleaving  to  it  hither  ! 

All  works,  each  in  their  degree,  are  a  making  of  Madness  sane  ; 
—  truly  enough  a  religious  operation  ;  which  cannot  be  carried  on 
without  religion.  You  have  not  work  otherwise  ;  you  have  eye- 
service,  greedy  grasping  of  wages,  swift  and  ever  swifter  manu- 
facture of  semblances  to  get  hold  of  wages.  Instead  of  better 
felt-hats  to  cover  your  head,  you  have  bigger  lath-and-plaster  hats 
set  travelling  the  streets  on  wheels.  Instead  of  heavenly  and 
earthly  Guidance  for  the  souls  of  men,  you  have  '  Black  or  White 
Surplice  '  Controversies,  stuffed  hair-and-leather  Popes  ;  terres- 
trial Law-wards,  Lords  and  Law-bringers,  '  organising  Labour  ' 
in  these  years,  by  passing  Corn-Laws.  With  all  which,  alas, 
this  distracted  Earth  is  now  full,  —  nigh  to  bursting.  Semblances 
most  smooth  to  the  touch  and  eye  ;  most  accursed  nevertheless  to 
body  and  soul.  Semblances,  be  they  of  Sham-woven  cloth  or  of 
Dilettante  Legislation,  which  are  not  real  wool  or  substance,  but 
Devils-dust  accursed  of  God  and  Man  !  No  man  has  worked,  or 
can  work,  except  religiously ;  not  even  the  poor  day-labourer,  the 
weaver  of  your  coat,  the  sewer  of  your  shoes.  All  men,  if  they 
work  not  as  in  a  Great  Taskmaster's  eye,  will  work  wrong,  work 
unhappily  for  themselves  and  you. 

Industrial  Work,  still  under  bondage  to  Mammon,  the  rational 
soul  of  it  not  yet  awakened,  is  a  tragic  spectacle.  Men  in  the 
rapidest  motion  and  self  motion  ;  restless,  with  convulsive  energy, 
as  if  driven  by  Galvanism,  as  if  possessed  by  a  Devil  ;  tearing 
asunder  mountains,  —  to  no  purpose,  for  Mammonism  is  always 


207 


Midas-eared  !  This  is  sad,  on  the  face  of  it.  Yet  courage  :  the 
beneficent  Destinies,  kind  in  their  sternness,  are  apprising  us  that 
this  cannot  continue.  Labour  is  not  a  devil,  even  while  encased 
in  Mammonism  ;  Labour  is  ever  an  imprisoned  god,  writhing  un- 
consciously or  consciously  to  escape  out  of  Mammonism  !  Plug- 
son  of  Undershot,  like  Taillefer  of  Normandy,  wants  victory  ; 
how  much  happier  will  even  Plugson  be  to  have  a  Chivalrous 
victory  than  a  Chactaw  one  ?  The  unredeemed  ugliness  is  that  of 
a  slothful  People.  Shew  me  a  People  energetically  busy  ;  heav- 
ing, struggling,  all  shoulders  at  the  wheel  ;  their  heart  pulsing, 
every  muscle  swelling  with  man's  energy  and  will ;  — I  shew  you 
a  People  of  whom  great  good  is  already  predicable,  to  whom  all 
manner  of  good  is  yet  certain  if  their  energy  endure.  By  very 
working,  they  will  learn  ;  they  have  Antaeus-like,  their  foot  on 
Mother  Fact  :  how  can  they  but  learn  1 

The  vulgarest  Plugson  of  a  Master-worker,  who  can  command 
workers  and  yet  work  out  of  them,  is  already  a  considerable  man. 
Blessed  and  thrice-blessed  symptoms  I  discern  of  Master-Workers 
who  are  not  vulgar  men  ;  who  are  Nobles,  and  begin  to  feel  that 
they  must  act  as  such  :  all  speed  to  these,  they  are  England's 
hope  at  present !  But  in  this  Plugson  himself,  conscious  of  al- 
most no  nobleness  whatever,  how  much  is  there  !  Not  without 
man's  faculty,  insight,  courage,  hard  energy,  is  this  rugged  figure. 
His  words  none  of  the  wisest ;  but  his  actings  cannot  be  altogether 
foolish.  Think,  how  were  it,  stoodst  thou  suddenly  in  his  shoes  ! 
He  has  to  command  a  thousand  men.  And  not  imaginary  com- 
manding ;  no,  it  is  real,  incessantly  practical.  The  evil  passions 
of  so  many  men  (with  the  Devil  in  them,  as  in  all  of  us)  he  has  to 
vanquish ;  by  manifold  force  of  speech  and  of  silence,  to  repress 
or  evade.  What  a  force  of  silence,  to  say  nothing  of  the  others, 
is  in  Plugson !  For  these  his  thousand  men  he  has  to  provide 
raw-material,  machinery,  arrangement,  house  room  ;  and  ever  at 
the  week's  end,  wages  by  due  sale.  No  Civil-List,  or  Gouldburn- 
Baring  Budget  has  he  to  fall  back  upon,  for  paying  of  his  regi- 
ment ;  he  has  to  pick  his  supplies  from  the  confused  face  of  the 
whole  Earth  and  Contemporaneous  History,  by  his  own  dexterity 
alone.  There  will  be  dry  eyes  if  he  fail  to  do  it !  —  He  ex- 
claims, at  present,  '  black  in  the  face,'  near  strangled  with  Dilet- 


208  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

tante  Legislation  :  "  Let  me  have  elbow-room,  throat -room,  and 
I  will  not  fail !  No,  I  will  spin  yet,  and  conquer  like  a  giant  : 
what  '  sinews  of  war '  lie  in  me,  untold  resources  towards  the 
Conquest  of  this  Planet,  if  instead  of  hanging  me,  you  husband 
them,  und  help  me!  "  —  My  indomitable  friend,  it  is  true;  and 
thou  shalt  and  must  be  helped. 

This  is  not  a  man  I  would  kill  and  strangle  by  Corn-Laws, 
even  if  I  could  !  No,  I  would  fling  my  Corn-Laws  and  Shot- 
belts  to  the  Devil ;  and  try  to  help  this  man.  I  wTould  teach  him 
by  noble  precept,  and  law-precept,  by  noble  example  most  of 
all,  that  Mammonism  was  not  the  essence  of  his  or  of  my  station 
in  God's  Universe  ;  but  the  adsciticious  excrescence  of  it ;  the  gross 
terrene,  godless  embodiment  of  it  ;  which  would  have  to  become, 
more  or  less,  a  godlike  one !  By  noble  real  legislation,  by  true 
node's- work,  by  unwearied,  valiant,  and  were  it  wage- less  effort, 
in  my  Parliament  and  in  my  Parish,  I  would  aid,  constrain,  en- 
courage him  to  effect  more  or  less  this  blessed  change.  I  should 
know  that  it  would  have  to  be  effected  ;  that  unless  it  were  in 
some  measure  effected,  he  and  I  and  all  of  us,  I  first  and  soonest 
of  all,  were  doomed  to  perdition  !  —  Effected  it  will  be  ;  unless  it 
were  a  Demon  that  made  this  Universe  ;  which  I,  for  my  own 
part,  do  at  no  moment,  under  no  form,  in  the  least  believe. 

May  it  please  your  Serene  Highnesses,  your  Majesties,  Lord- 
ships, and  Law-wardships,  the  proper  Epic  of  this  world  is  not 
now  '  Arms  and  the  Man,'  —  how  much  less  '  shirt-frills  and  the 
Man  :  '  No,  it  is  now  '  Tools  and  the  Man  :  '  that  henceforth  to  all 
time  is  now  our  Epic  ;  —  and  you,  first  of  all  others,  I  think  were 
wise  to  take  note  of  that ! 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


DEMOCRACY. 


If  the  Serene  Highnesses  and  Majesties  do  not  take  note  of 
that,  then,  as  I  perceive,  '  that ?  will  take  note  of  itself!  The 
time  for  levity,  insincerity,  and  idle  babble  and  play-acting,  in  all 
kinds,  is  gone  by  ;  it  is  a  serious,  grave  time.  Old  long-vexed 
questions,  not  yet  solved  in  logical  words  or  parliamentary  laws, 
are  fast  solving  themselves  in  facts,  somewhat  unblessed  to  be- 
hold !  This  largest  of  questions,  this  question  of  Work  and 
Wages,  which  ought,  had  we  heeded  Heaven's  voice,  to  have 
begun  two  generations  ago  or  more,  cannot  be  delayed  longer 
without  hearing  Earth's  voice.  '  Labour  '  will  verily  need  to  be 
somewhat  l  organized,'  as  they  say,  —  God  knows  with  what  diffi- 
culty. Man  will  actually  need  to  have  his  debts  and  earnings  a 
little  better  paid  by  man  ;  which,  let  Parliament  speak  of  them  or 
be  silent  of  them,  are  eternally  his  due  from  man,  and  cannot, 
without  penalty  and  at  length  not  without  death  penalty,  be  with- 
held. How  much  ought  to  cease  among  us  straightway  ;  how  much 
ought  to  begin  straightway,  while  the  hours  yet  are  ! 

Truly  they  are  strange  results  to  which  this  of  leaving  all  to 
'  Cash  ;  '  of  quietly  shutting  up  the  God's  Temple,  and  gradually 
opening  wide-open  the  Mammon's  Temple,  '  Laissez-faire,'  and 
Every  man  for  himself!  — have  led  us  in  these  days  !  We  have 
Upper,  speaking  classes,  who  indeed  do  '  speak '  as  never  man 
spake  before  ;  the  withered  flimsiness,  the  godless  baseness  and 
barrenness  of  whose  speech  might  of  itself  indicate  what  kind  of 
Doing  and  practical  Governing  went  on  under  it !  For  Speech  is 
the  gaseous  element  out  of  which  most  kinds  of  Practice  and  Per- 
formance especially  all  kinds  of  moral  Performance,  condense 
themselves,  and  take  shape  ;  as  the  one  is,  so  will  the  other  be. 
18* 


210  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Descending,  accordingly,  into  the  Dumb  Class  in  its  Stockport 
Cellars  and  Poor-Law  Bastilles,  have  we  not  to  announce  that 
they  also  are  hitherto  unexampled  in  the  History  of  Adam's  Pos- 
terity 1 

Life  was  never  a  May-game  for  men  ;  in  all  times  the  lot  of 
the  dumb-millions  born  to  toil  was  defaced  with  manifold  suffer- 
ings, injustices,  heavy  burdens,  avoidable  and  unavoidable  ;  not 
play  at  all,  but  hard  work  that  made  the  sinews  sore,  and  the 
heart  sore.  As  bond  slaves,  villa?ii,  bordarii,  sochemanni,  nay 
indeed  as  dukes,  earls,  and  Kings,  men  were  oftentimes  made 
weary  of  their  life  ;  and  had  to  say,  in  the  sweat  of  their  brow 
and  of  their  soul,  Behold  it  is  not  sport,  it  is  grim  earnest,  and 
our  back  can  bear  no  more  !  Who  knows  not  what  massacrings 
and  harryings  there  have  been  ;  grinding,  long-continuing, 
unbearable  injustices,  till  the  heart  had  to  rise  in  madness,  and 
some  "  Eu  Sachsen  nimith  euer  Sachses,  You  Saxons,  out  with 
your  Gully-Knives  then."  You  Saxons,  some  '  arrestment,' 
partial  '  arrestment  of  the  Knaves  and  Dastards  '  has  become  indis- 
pensable !     The  page  of  Dryasdust  is  heavy  with  such  details. 

And  yet  I  will  venture  to  believe  that  in  no  time,  since  the 
beginnings  of  Society,  was  the  lot  of  those  same  dumb  millions  of 
toilers  so  entirely  unbearable  as  it  is  even  in  the  days  now  passing 
over  us.  It  is  not  to  die,  or  even  to  die  of  hunger,  that  makes  a 
man  wretched  ;  many  men  have^ied  ;  all  men  must  die  ;  —  the 
last  exit  of  us  all  is  in  a  Fire  Chariot  of  Pain.  But  it  is  to  live 
miserable  we  know  not  why  ;  to  work  sore  and  yet  gain  nothing  ; 
to  be  heart-worn,  weary,  yet  isolated,  unrelated,  girt  in  with  a 
cold  universal  Laissez-faire  :  it  is  to  die  slowly  all  our  life  long, 
imprisoned  in  a  deaf,  dead  Infinite  Injustice,  —  as  in  the  accursed 
iron  belly  of  a  Phalaris  Bull !  This  is  and  remains  forever  intol- 
erable to  all  men  whom  God  has  made.  Do  we  wonder  at  French 
Revolutions,  Chartisms  Revolts  of  Three  Days  ?  The  times,  if 
we  will  consider  them,  are  really  unexampled. 

Never  before  did  I  hear  of  an  Irish  Widow  reduced  to  prove  her 
sisterhood  by  dying  of  typhus-fever  and  infecting  '  seventeen  per- 
sons,'—  saying  in  such  undeniable  way,  "You  see,  I  was  your 
sister  !  "  Sisterhood,  Brotherhood  was  often  forgotten,  but  not 
till  the  rise  of  the  ultimate  Mammon  and  Shotbelt  Gospels,  did  I 


DEMOCRACY.  211 

ever  see  it  so  expressly  denied.  If  no  pious  Lord,  or  Law-ward 
would  remember" it,  always  some  pious  Lady  ('  Hlaf-digJ  Bene- 
factress, '  Loaf-giveress,'  they  say  she  is, — blessings  on  her 
beautiful  heart !)  was  there,  with  mild  mother  voice  and  hand,  to 
remember  it  ;  some  pious  thoughtful  Elder,  what  we  now  call 
1  Prester,'  Presbyter  or  '  Priest,'  was  there  to  put  all  men  in  mind 
of  it,  in  the  name  of  the  God  who  had  made  all. 

Not  even  in  Black  Dahomy  was  it  ever,  I  think,  forgotten  to 
the  typhus-fever  length.  Mungo  Park,  resourceless  had  sunk 
down  to  die  under  the  Negro  Village-Tree;  a  horrible  white 
object  in  the  eyes  of  all.  But  in  the  poor  Black  Woman,  and 
her  daughter  who  stood  aghast  at  him,  whose  earthly  wealth  and 
funded  capital  consisted  of  one  small  calabash  of  rice,  there  lived 
a  heart  richer  than  '  Laissez-faire  :'  they,  with  a  royal  munificence, 
boiled  their  rice  for  him  ;  they  sang  all  night  to  him,  spinning 
assiduous  on  their  cotton  distaffs,  as  he  lay  to  sleep  :  "  Let  us 
pity  the  poor  white  man  ;  no  mother  has  he  to  fetch  him  milk,  no 
sister  to  grind  him  corn  !"  Thou  poor  black  Noble  One,  —  thou 
Lady  too  :  did  not  a  God  make  thee  too  ;  was  there  not  in  thee 
too  something  of  a  God  ! 

Gurth,  born  thrall  of  Cedric  the  Saxon,  has  been  greatly  pitied 
by  Dryasdust  and  others.  Gurth  with  the  brass  collar  round 
his  neck,  tending  Cedric's  pigs  in  the  glades  of  the  wood,  is  not 
what  I  call  an  exemplar  of  human  felicity  :  but  Gurth,  with  the 
sky  above  him,  with  the  free  air  and  tinted  boscage  and  umbrage 
round  him,  and  in  him  at  least  the  certainty  of  supper  and  social 
lodging  when  he  came  home,  —  Gurth  to  me  seems  happy  in 
comparison  with  many  a  Lancashire  and  Buckinghamshire  man 
of  these  days  not  born  thrall  of  any  body  !  GurtrTs  brass  collar 
did  not  gall  him ;  Cedric  deserved  to  be  his  Master.  The  pigs 
were  Cedric's,  but  Gurth  too  would  get  his  parings  of  them? 
Gurth  had  the  inexpressible  satisfaction  of  feeling  himself  related 
indissolubly,  though  in  a  rude  brass-collar  way,  to  his  fellow 
mortals  in  this  earth.  He  had  superiors,  inferiors,  equals. — 
Gurth  is  now  '  emancipated  '  long  since  ;  has  what  we  call  *  Lib- 
erty.' Liberty,  I  am  told,  is  a  divine  thing.  Liberty,  when  it 
becomes  the  liberty  to  die  by  starvation  is  not  so  divine  ! 


212  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Liberty?  The  true  liberty  of  a  man,  you  would  say,  consisted 
in  his  finding  out,  or  being  forced  to  find  out  the  right  path, 
and  to  walk  therein.  To  learn  or  to  be  taught  what  woik  he  ac- 
tually was  able  for,  and  then  by  permission,  persuasion  and  even 
compulsion,  to  set  about  doing  of  the  same  !  That  is  his  true 
blessedness,  honour,  liberty  and  maximum  of  well-being  :  if  lib- 
erty be  not  that,  I,  for  one,  have  small  care  about  liberty.  You 
do  not  allow  a  palpable  madman  to  leap  over  precipices ;  you  vio- 
late his  liberty,  you  that  are  wise  ;  and  keep  him,  were  it  in  strait- 
waistcoats,  away  from  the  precipices  !  Every  stupid,  every  cow- 
ardly and  foolish  man  is  but  a  less  palpable  madman  :  his  true 
liberty  were  that  a  wiser  man,  that  any  and  every  wiser  man, 
could  by  brass  collars,  or  in  whatever  milder  or  sharper  way,  lay 
hold  of  him  when  he  was  going  wrong,  and  order  and  compel 
him  to  go  a  little  righter.  O  if  thou  really  art  my  Senior,  Seig- 
neur, my  Elder,  Presbyter  or  Priest  —  if  thou  art  in  very  deed 
my  Wiser,  may  a  beneficent  instinct  lead  and  impel  thee  to  '  con- 
quer '  me,  to  command  me  !  If  thou  do  know  better  than  I  what 
is  good  and  right,  I  conjure  thee  in  the  name  of  God,  force  me  to 
do  it ;  were  it  by  never  such  brass  collars,  whips  and  hand-cuffs, 
leave  me  not  to  walk  over  precipices  !  That  I  have  been  called 
by  all  the  Newspapers  a  '  free  man  '  will  avail  me  little,  if  my 
pilgrimage  have  ended  in  death  and  wreck.  O  that  the  News- 
papers had  called  me  slave,  coward,  fool,  or  what  it  pleased  their 
sweet  voices  to  name  me,  and  I  had  attained  not  death  but  life  ! 
Liberty  requires  new  definitions. 

A  conscious  abhorrence  and  intolerance  of  Folly,  of  Baseness, 
Stupidity,  Poltroonery  and  all  that  brood  of  things,  dwells  deep 
in  some  men  :  still  deeper  in  others  an  wnconscious  abhorrence, 
and  intolerance,  clothed  moreover  by  the  beneficent  Supreme 
Powers  in  what  stout  appetites,  energies,  egoisms  so  called,  are 
suitable  to  it ;  —  these  latter  are  your  Conquerors,  Romans,  Nor- 
mans, Russians,  Indo-English  ;  Founders  of  what  we  call  Aris- 
tocracies. Which  indeed  have  they  not  the  most  'divine  right' 
to  found  ;  being  themselves  very  truly  ' Aqiaxoi,  Bravest,  Best  ; 
and  conquering  generally  a  confused  rabble  of  Worst,  or  at  low- 
est, clearly  enough,  of  Worse1?  I  think  their  'divine  right,' 
tried,  with  affirmating  verdict,  in  the  greatest  Law-Court  known 


DEMOCRACY.  213 

to  me,  was  good  !  A  class  of  men  who  are  dreadfully  exclaimed 
against  by  Dryasdust ;  of  whom  nevertheless  beneficent  Nature 
has  oftentimes  had  need,  — and  may  alas,  again  have  need. 

Whom  across  the  hundredfold  poor  scepticisms,  trivialities 
and  constitutional  cobwebberies  of  Dryasdust,  you  catch  any 
glimpse  of  a  William  the  Conqueror,  a  Tancred  of  Hauteville  or 
such  like,  —  do  you  riot  discern  veritably  some  rude  outline  of  a 
true  God-made  King  ;  whom  not  the  Champion  of  England  cased 
in  tin,  but  all  Nature  and  the  Universe  were  calling  to  the  throne1? 
It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  he  get  thither.  Nature  does  not 
mean  her  poor  Saxon  children  to  perish,  of  obesity,  stupor  or 
other  malady,  as  yet :  a  stern  Ruler  therefore  and  Line  of  Rulers 
is  called  in,  —  a  stern  but  most  beneficent  Perpetual  House-Sur- 
geon is  called  in,  — by  Nature,  and  even  the  appropriate  fees  are 
provided  for  him !  Dryasdust  talks  lamentably  about  Here- 
ward  and  the  Fen  Counties,  fate  of  Earl  Walthcof,  Yorkshire 
and  the  North  reduced  to  ashes  ;  all  which  is  undoubtedly  lament- 
able. But  even  Dryasdust  apprises  me  of  one  fact :  '  a  child, 
in  this  William's  reign,  might  have  carried  a  purse  of  gold  from 
end  to  end  of  England.'  My  erudite  friend,  it  is  a  fact  which  out- 
weighs a  thousand  !  Sweep  away  thy  constitutional,  sentimental 
and  other  cobwebberies ;  look  eye  to  eye,  if  thou  still  have  any 
eye,  in  the  face  of  this  big  burly  William  Bastard  :  thou  wilt  see 
a  fellow  of  most  flashing  discernment,  of  most  strong  lion-heart ; 
—  in  whom,  as  it  were,  within  a  frame  of  oak  and  iron,  the  gods 
have  planted  the  soul  of '  a  man  of  genius  ' !  Dost  thou  call  that 
nothing  1  I  call  it  an  immense  thing !  —  Rage  enough  was  in 
this  Willelmus  Conquestor,  rage  enough  for  his  occasions  ;  — and 
yet  the  essential  element  of  him,  as  of  all  such  men,  is  not  scorch- 
ing fire  but  shining  illuminative  light.  Fire  and  light  are  strangely 
interchangeable  ;  nay  at  bottom,  I  have  found  them  different  forms 
of  the  same  most  godlike  elementary  substance  in  our  world  :  — > 
a  thing  worth  stating  in  these  days.  The  essential  element  of 
Conquestor  is,  first  of  all,  the  most  sun-eyed  perception  of  what 
is  really  what  on  this  God's-Earth  ;  —  which,  thou  wilt  find,  does 
mean  at  bottom  '  Justice,'  and  virtues  not  a  few  :  conformity  to 
what  the  Maker  has  seen  good  to  make  ;  that,  I  suppose,  will 
mean  Justice  and  a  Virtue  or  two  1  — 


214  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Dost  thou  think  Willelmus  Conquestor  would  have  tolerated 
ten  years'  jargon,  one  hour's  jargon,  on  the  propriety  of  killing 
Cetton-manufacturers  by  partridge  Corn-Laws  ?  I  fancy,  this 
was  not  the  man  to  knock  out  of  his  night's-rest  with  nothing 
but  a  noisy  bedlamism  in  your  mouth  !  "  Assist  us  still  better  to 
bush  the  partridges  ;  strangle  Plugson  who  spins  the  shirts?  "  — 

"  Par  la  splendeur  de  Dieu!  " Dost  thou  think  Willelmus 

Conquestor,  in  this  new  Time,  with  Steam-engine  Captains  of 
Industry  on  one  hand  of  him,  and  Joe-Manton  Captains  of  Idle- 
ness on  the  other,  would  have  doubted  which  icas  really  the 
Best  ;  which  did  deserve  strangling,  and  which  not? 

I  have  a  certain  indestructible  regard  for  Willelmus  Conquestor. 
A  resident  House-Surgeon,  provided  by  Nature  for  her  beloved 
English  People,  and  even  furnished  with  the  requisite  'fees,'  as 
I  said,  — for  he  by  no  means  felt  himself  doing  Nature's  work, 
this  Willelmus,  but  his  own  work  exclusively.  And  his  own 
work  withal  it  was  :  '  Par  la  splendeur  de  Dieu.''  —  I  say  it  is  ne- 
cessary to  get  the  work  out  of  such  a  man  however  harsh  that  be  ! 
When  a  wrorld  not  yet  doomed  for  death,  is  rushing  dowTn  to  ever 
deeper  Baseness  and  confusion,  it  is  a  dire  Necessity  of  Nature's 
to  bring  in  her  Aristocracies,  her  Best,  even  by  forcible  me- 
thods. When  their  descendants  or  representatives  cease  entirely 
to  be  the  Best,  Nature's  poor  world  will  very  soon  rush  down 
again  to  Baseness,  —  and  it  becomes  a  dire  Necessity  of  Nature's 
to  cast  them  out !  Hence  French  Revolutions,  Five-point  Char- 
ters, Democracies,  and  a  mournful  list  of  Etceteras  in  these  our 
afflicted  times. 

To  what  extent  Democracy  has  now  reached,  how  it  advances 
irresistible  with  ominous,  ever-increasing  speed,  he  that  will  open 
his  eyes  on  any  province  of  human  affairs  may  discern.  Democ- 
racy is  everywhere  the  inexorable  demand  of  these  ages,  swiftly 
fulfilling  itself.  From  the  thunder  of  Napoleon  battles,  to  the 
jabbering  of  open-vestry  in  St.  Mary  Axe,  all  things  announce 
Democracy.  A  distinguished  man,  whom  some  of  my  readers 
will  hear  again  with  pleasure,  thus  writes  to  me  what  in  these 
days  he  notes  from  the  Wahngasse  of  Weissnichtwo,  where  our 
London  fashions  seem  to  be  in  full  vogue  Let  us  hear  the  Herr 
Teufelsdrbckh  again,  were  it  but  the  smallest  word  ! 


DEMOCRACY.  215 

1  Democracy,  which  means  despair  of  finding  any  Heroes  to 
govern  you,  and  contented  putting  up  with  the  want  of  them, — 
alas,  thou  too,  mein  Lieber,  seest  well  how  close  it  is  of  Kin  to 
Atheism,  and  other  sad  Is/ns :  he  who  discovers  no  God  what- 
ever, how  shall  he  discover  Heroes  the  visible  Temples  of  God  1  — 
Strange  enough  meanwhile  it  is,  to  observe  with  what  thought- 
lessness, here  in  our  rigidly  Conservative  Country,  men  rush  into 
Democracy  with  full  cry.  Beyond  doubt,  his  Excellenz  the 
Titular-Herr  Ritter  Kauderwalsch  von  Pferdefuss-Quacksalber, 
he  our  distinguished  Conservative  Premier  himself,  and  all  but 
the  thicker-headed  of  his  Party,  discern  Democracy  to  be  inevit- 
able as  Death,  and  are  even  desperate  of  delaying  it  much ! 

'  You  cannot  walk  the  streets  without  beholding  Democracy 
announce  itself:  the  very  Tailor  has  become,  if  not  properly 
Sansculottic,  which  to  him  would  be  ruinous,  yet  a  Tailor  uncon- 
sciously symbolising,  and  prophesying  with  his  scissors,  the  reign 
of  Equality.  What  now  is  our  fashionable  coat  1  A  thing  of 
superfinest  texture,  of  deeply  meditated  cut ;  with  Malinnes-lace 
cuffs  ;  quilted  with  gold  ;  so  that  a  man  can  carry,  without  diffi- 
culty, an  estate  of  land  on  his  back?  Keineswegs,  by  no  manner 
of  means  !  The  Sumptuary  Laws  have  fallen  into  such  a  state 
of  desuetude  as  was  never  before  seen.  Our  fashionable  coat  is 
an  amphibium  between  barn-sack  and  drayman's  doublet.  The 
cloth  of  it  is  studiously  coarse  ;  the  colour  a  speckled  soot-black 
or  rust-brown  grey ;  —  the  nearest  approach  to  a  Peasant's. 
And  for  shape,  —  thou  shouldst  see  it!  The  last  consummation 
of  the  year  now  passing  over  us  is  definable  as  Three  Bags  :  a 
big  bag  for  the  body,  two  small  bags  for  the  arms,  and  by  way  of 
collar  a  hem  !  The  first  Antique  Cheruscan  who,  of  felt-cloth  or 
bear's  hide,  with  bone  or  metal  needle,  set  about  making  himself 
a  coat,  before  Tailors  had  yet  awakened  out  of  Nothing,  —  did 
not  he  make  it  even  so  1  A  loose  wide  poke  for  body,  with  two 
holes  to  let  out  the  arms ;  this  was  his  original  coat ;  to  which 
holes  it  was  soon  visible  that  two  small  loose  pokes,  or  sleeves, 
easily  appended,  would  be  an  improvement. 

'  Thus  has  the  Tailor-art,  so  to  speak,  overset  itself,  like  most 
other  things  ;  changed  its  centre-of-gravity,  whirled  suddenly 
over  from  zenith  to  nadir.      Your  Stutz,   with  huge  somerset, 


216  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

vaults  from  his  high  shop-board  down  to  the  depths  of  primeval 
savagery,  —  carrying  much  along  with  him  !  For  I  will  invite 
thee  to  reflect  that  the  Tailor,  as  topmost  ultimate  froth  of  Hu- 
man Society,  is  indeed  swift-passing,  evanescent,  slippery  to  de- 
cipher ;  yet  significant  of  much,  nay  of  all.  Topmost  evanescent 
froth,  he  is  churned  up  from  the  very  lees,  and  from  all  interme- 
diate regions  of  the  liquor.  The  general  outcome  he,  visible  to 
the  eye  ;  of  what  men  aimed  to  do,  and  were  obliged  and  enabled 
to  do,  in  this  one  public  department  of  symbolising  themselves  to 
each  other  by  covering  of  their  skins.  A  smack  of  all  Human 
Life  lies  in  the  Tailor  :  its  wild  struggles  towards  beauty,  dignity, 
freedom,  victory;  and  how,  hemmed  in  by  Sedan,  and  Hudders- 
field,  by  Nescience,  Dulness,  Prurience,  and  other  sad  necessities 
and  laws  of  Nature,  it  has  attained  just  to  this  :  Grey  Savagery 
of  Three  Sacks  with  a  hem  ! 

'  "When  the  very  Tailor  verges  towards  Sansculottism,  is  it  not 
ominous  1  The  last  Divinity  of  poor  Mankind  dethroning  him- 
self; sinking  Ins  taper  too,  flame  downmost,  like  the  Genius  of 
Sleep  or  of  Death  ;  admonitory  that  Tailor-time  shall  be  no 
more  !  — For,  little  as  one  could  advise  Sumptuary  Laws  at  the 
present  epoch,  yet  nothing  is  clearer  than  that  when  ranks  do  ac- 
tually exist,  strict  division  of  costumes  will  also  be  enforced  ;  that 
if  we  ever  have  a  new  Hierarchy  and  Aristocracy,  acknowledged 
veritably  as  such,  for  which  I  daily  pray  Heaven,  the  Tailor  will 
re-awaken  ;  and  be,  by  volunteering  and  appointment,  consciously 
and  unconsciously,  a  safeguard  of  that  same.'  —  Certain  farther 
observations,  from  the  same  invaluable  pen,  on  our  never-ending 
changes  of  mode,  our  '  perpetual  Nomadic  and  even  Ape-like 
appetite  for  change  and  mere  change,'  in  all  the  equipments  of 
our  existence,  and  the  '  fatal  revolutionary  character '  thereby 
manifested,  we  suppress  for  the  present.  It  may  be  admitted  that 
Democracy,  in  all  meanings  of  the  word,  is  in  full  career  ;  irre- 
sistible by  any  Ritter  Kauderwiilsch  or  other  son  of  Adam  as  times 
go.     Liberty  is  a  thing  men  are  determined  to  have. 

But  truly,  as  we  have  meanwhile  to  remark,  '  the  liberty  of  not 
being  oppressed  by  your  fellow  men  '  is  an  indispensable,  yet  one 
of  the  most  insignificant  fractional  parts  of  Human  Liberty.     No 


DEMOCRACY.  217 

man  oppresses  thee,  can  bid  thee  fetch  or  carry,  come  or  go,  with- 
out reason  shewn.  True  ;  from  all  men  thou  art  emancipated  : 
but  from  Thyself  and  from  the  Devil?  — No  men,  wiser,  or  un- 
wiser,  can  make  thee  come  or  go  :  but  thy  own  futilities,  bewil- 
derments, thy  false  appetites  for  Money,  Windsor  Georges  and 
such  like  1  No  man  oppresses  thee,  0  free  and  independent 
Franchiser  :  but  does  not  this  stupid  Porter-pot  oppress  thee  ? 
No  son  of  Adam  can  bid  thee  come  or  go  ;  but  this  absurd  Pot  of 
Heavy-wet,  this  can  and  does  !  Thou  art  the  thrall  not  of  Cedric 
the  Saxon,  but  of  thy  own  brutal  appetites,  and  this  scoured  dish 
of  liquor.  And  thou  pratest  of  thy  '  liberty  1  '  Thou  entire 
blockhead  ! 

Heavy-wet  and  gin  :  alas,  these  are  not  the  only  kinds  of  thral- 
dom. Thou  who  walkest  in  a  vain  shew,  looking  out  with  orna- 
mental dilettante  sniff  and  serene  supremacy,  at  all  Life  and  all 
Death  ;  and  amblest  jauntily  ;  perking  up  thy  poor  talk  into 
crochets,  thy  poor  conduct  into  fatuous  somnambulisms  ;  — and  art 
as  an  '  enchanted  Ape  '  under  God's  sky,  where  thou  mightest 
have  been  a  man,  had  proper  Schoolmasters  and  Conquerors,  and 
Constables  with  cat-o'-nine-tails,  been  vouchsafed  thee  :  dost  thou 
call  that  '  liberty1?  '  Or  your  unreposing  Mammon-worshipper, 
again,  driven  as  if  by  Galvanisms,  by  Devils  and  Fixed-Ideas, 
who  rises  early  and  sits  late  chasing  the  impossible  ;  straining 
every  faculty  to  '  fill  himself  with  the  east  wind,'  —  how  merciful 
were  it,  could  you,  by  mild  persuasion  or  by  the  severest  tyranny 
so-called,  check  him  in  his  mad  path,  turn  him  into  a  wiser  one  ! 
All  painful  tyranny,  in  that  case  again,  were  but  '  mild  surgery  ;  ' 
the  pain  of  it  cheap,  as  health  and  life,  instead  of  galvanism  and 
fixed-idea,  is  cheap  at  any  price. 

Sure  enough,  Of  all  paths  a  man  could  strike  into  there  is  at 
any  given  moment  a  best  path  for  every  man  ;  a  thing  which,  here 
and  now,  it  were  of  all  things  wisest  for  him  to  do  ;  —  which  could 
he  be  but  led  or  driven  to  do,  he  were  then  doing  '  like  a  man,'  as 
we  phrase  it  ;  all  men  and  gods  agreeing  with  him,  the  whole 
Universe  Virtually  exclaiming  Well-done  to  him !  His  success, 
in  such  case,  were  complete ;  his  felicity  a  maximum.  This  path, 
to  find  this  path  and  walk  in  it,  is  the  one  thing  needful  for  him. 
Whatsoever  forwards  him  in  that,  let  it  come  to  him  even  in  the 
19 


218  '  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

shape  of  blows  and  spurnings,  is  liberty  :  whatsoever  hinders 
him,  were  it  wardmotes,  open-vestries,  pollbooths,  tremendous 
cheers,  rivers  of  heavy-wet,  is  slavery. 

The  notion  that  a  man's  liberty  consists  in  giving  his  vote  at 
election-hustings,  and  saying,  "  Behold  now  I  too  have  my  twenty- 
thousandth  part  of  a  Talker  in  our  National  Palaver  ;  will  not  all 
the  gods  be  good  to  me!"  —  is  one  of  the  pleasantest !  Nature 
nevertheless  is  kind  at  present  ;  and  puts  it  into  heads  of  many, 
almost  of  all.  The  liberty  especially  which  has  to  purchase  itself 
by  social  isolation,  and  each  man  standing  separate  from  the  other, 
having  '  no  business  with  him  '  but  a  cash-account  :  this  is  such 
a  liberty  as  the  Earth  seldom  saw  ;  —  as  the  Earth  will  not  long 
put  up  with,  recommend  it  how  you  may.  This  liberty  turns  out, 
before  it  have  long  continued  in  action,  with  all  men  flinging  up 
their  caps  round  it,  to  be,  for  the  Working  Millions  a  liberty  to 
die  by  want  of  food  ;  for  the  Idle  Thousands  and  Units,  alas  a 
still  more  fatal  liberty  to  live  in  want  of  work  ;  to  have  no  earnest 
duty  to  do  in  this  God's-world  an}'  more.  What  becomes  of 
a  man  in  such  predicament?  Earth's  Laws  are  silent;  and 
Heaven's  speak  in  a  voice  which  is  not  heard.  No  work,  and 
the  ineradicable  need  of  work,  give  rise  to  new  very  wondrous 
life-philosophies,  new  very  wondrous  life-practices!  Dilettantism, 
Pococurantism,  Beau  Brummelism,  with  perhaps  an  occasional 
half-mad,  protesting  burst  of  Byronism,  establish  themselves  :  at 
the  end  of  a  certain  period,  —  if  you  go  back  to  'the  Dead  Sea,' 
there  is,  say  our  Moslem  friends,  a  very  strange  '  Sabbath-day' 
transacting  itself  there!  —  Brethren,  we  know  but  imperfectly 
yet,  after  ages  of  Constitutional  Government,  what  liberty  is  and 
Slavery  is. 

Democracy,  the  chase  of  Liberty  in  that  direction,  shall  go  its 
full  course  ;  unrestrainable  by  him  of  Pferdefuss-Quacksalber,  or 
any  of  his  household.  The  Toiling  Millions  of  Mankind,  in  most 
vital  need  and  passionate  instinctive  desire  of  Guidance,  shall  cast 
away  False-Guidance;  and  hope,  for  an  hour,  that  No-Guidance 
will  suffice  them  :  but  it  can  be  for  an  hour  only.  The  smallest 
item  of  human  Slavery  is  the  oppression  of  man  by  his  Mock- 
Superiors  ;  the  palpablest,  but  I  say,  at  bottom  the  smallest.  Let 
him  shake  ofT  such  oppression,  trample  it  indignantly  under  his 


DEMOCRACY.  219 

feet ;  I  blame  him  not,  I  pity  and  commend  him.  But  oppression 
by  your  Mock-Superiors  well  shaken  off,  the  grand  problem  yet 
remains  to  solve  :  That  of  finding  government  by  your  Real-Su- 
periors !  Alas,  how  shall  we  ever  learn  the  solution  of  that, 
benighted,  bewildered,  sniffing,  sneering,  god-forgetting  unfortu- 
nates as  we  are  1  It  is  a  work  for  centuries  ;  to  be  taught  us  by 
tribulations,  confusions,  insurrections,  obstructions  ;  who  knows 
if  not  by  conflagration  and  despair !  It  is  a  lesson  inclusive  of 
all  other  lessons  ;  the  hardest  of  all  lessons  to  learn. 

One  thing  I  do  know  :  Those  Apes  chattering  on  the  branches 
by  the  Dead  Sea  never  got  it  learned  ;  but  chatter  there  to  this 
day.  To  them  no  Moses  need  come  a  second  time  ;  a  thousand 
Moseses  would  be  but  so  many  painted  Phantasms,  interesting 
Fellow-apes  of  new  stiange  aspect,  — whom  they  would  'invite 
to  dinner,'  be  glad  to  meet  with  in  Lion-Soirees.  To  them  the 
voice  of  Prophecy,  of  heavenly  monition  is  quite  ended.  They 
chatter  there,  all  Heaven  shut  to  them,  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
The  unfortunates  !  0,  what  is  dying  of  hunger,  with  honest  tools 
in  your  hand,  with  a  manful  purpose  in  your  heart,  and  much  real 
labour  lying  round  you  done,  in  comparison  1  You  honestly  quit 
your  tools  ;  quit  a  most  muddy  confused  coil  of  sore  work,  short 
rations,  of  sorrows,  dispiritments  and  contradictions,  having  now 
honestly  done  with  it  all ;  —  and  await,  not  entirely  in  a  distracted 
manner,  what  the  Supreme  Powers,  and  the  Silences  and  the 
Eternities  may  have  to  say  to  you. 

A  second  thing  I  know,  this  lesson  will  have  to  be  learned, — 
under  penalties  !  England  will  either  learn  it,  or  England  will 
also  cease  to  exist  among  Nations.  England  will  either  learn  to 
reverence  its  heroes,  and  discriminate  them  from  its  Sham-Heroes 
and  Valets,  and  gaslighted  Histrios  ;  and  to  prize  them  as  the 
audible  God's-voice  amid  all  inane  jargons  and  temporary  market- 
cries,  and  say  to  them  with  heart-loyalty,  "Be  ye  King  and 
Priest  and  Gospel  and  Guidance  for  us  :  "  or  else  England  will 
continue  to  worship  new  and  ever  new  forms  of  Quackhood, — 
and  so,  with  what  resiliences  and  reboundings  matters  little,  go 
down  to  the  Father  of  Quacks  !  Can  I  dread  such  things  of  Eng- 
land 1  Wretched  thick-eyed,  gross-hearted  mortals,  why  will  ye 
worship  Lies,  and  '  stuffed  clothes-suits  created  by  the  ninth-parts 


220  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

of  men  !  '  It  is  not  your  purses  that  suffer ;  your  farm-rents, 
your  commerces,  your  mill-revenues,  loud  as  ye  lament  over 
these  ;  no,  it  is  not  these  alone,  but  a  far  deeper  than  these  :  it  is 
your  Souls  that  lie  dead,  crushed  down  under  despicable  Night- 
mares, Atheisms,  Brain-fumes  ;  and  are  not  Souls  at  all,  but  mere 
succedanea  for  salt  to  keep  your  bodies  and  their  appetites  from 
putrefying !  Your  Cotton-spinning  and  thrice  miraculous  me- 
chanism, what  is  this  too,  by  itself,  but  a  larger  kind  of  Animal- 
ism? Spiders  can  spin,  Beavers  can  build  and  shew  contrivance  ; 
the  Ant  lays  up  accumulation  of  capital,  and  has,  for  aught  I 
know,  a  Bank  of  Antland.  If  there  is  no  soul  in  man  higher  than 
all  that,  did  it  reach  to  sailing  on  the  cloud-rack  and  spinning  sea- 
sand  ;  then  I  say,  man  is  but  an  animal,  a  more  cunning  kind  of 
brute  :  he  has  no  soul,  but  only  a  succedaneum  for  salt.  Where- 
fore, seeing  himself  to  be  truly  of  the  beasts  that  perish,  —  he 
ought  to  admit  it,  I  think  ;  and  also  straightway  universally  kill 
himself;  and  so,  in  a  man-like  manner,  at  least  end,  and  wave 
these  brute-worlds  his  dignified  farewell !  — 


CHAPTER    XIV. 


SIR    JABESH    WINDBAG. 


Oliver  Cromwell,  whose  body  they  hung  on  their  Tyburn 
Gallows  because  he  had  found  the  Christian  Religion  inexecutable 
in  this  country,  remains  to  me  by  far  the  remarkablest  Governor 
we  have  had  here  for  the  last  five  centuries  or  so.  For  the  last 
five  centuries  there  has  been  no  Governor  among  us  with  anything 
like  similar  talent ;  and  for  the  last  two  centuries,  no  Governor, 
we  may  say,  with  the  possibility  of  similar  talent,  —  with  an  idea 
in  the  heart  of  him,  capable  of  inspiring  similar  talent,  capable  of 
coexisting  therewith.  When  you  consider  that  Oliver  believed  in 
a  God,  the  difference  between  Oliver's  position  and  that  of  any 
subsequent  Governor  of  this  country  becomes,  the  more  you  reflect 
on  it,  the  more  immeasurable  ! 

Oliver,  no  volunteer  in  Public  Life,  but  plainly  a  balloted  sol- 
dier strictly  ordered  thither,  enters  upon  Public  Life,  comports 
himself  there  like  a  man  who  carried  his  own  life  itself  in  his 
hand  ;  like  a  man  whose  Great  Commander's  eye  was  always  on 
him.  Not  without  results.  Oliver,  well  advanced  in  years,  finds 
now,  by  Destiny  and  his  own  Deservings,  or  as  he  himself  better 
phrased  it,  by  wondrous  successive  '  Births  of  Providence,'  the 
Government  of  England  put  into  his  hands.  In  senate-house 
and  battle-field,  in  counsel  and  in  action,  in  private  and  in  public, 
this  man  had  proved  himself  a  man  :  England  and  the  voice  of 
God,  through  waste  awful  whirlwinds  and  environments,  speaking 
to  his  great  heart,  summon  him  to  assert  formally,  in  the  way  of 
solemn  Public  Fact  and  as  a  new  piece  of  English  Law,  what  in- 
formally and  by  Nature's  eternal  Law  needed  no  asserting,  That 
he,  Oliver,  was  the  Ablest-Man  of  England,  the  King  of  England ; 
that  he,  Oliver,  would  undertake  governing  England.  His  way 
19* 


222  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

of  making  this  same  '  assertion,'  the  one  way  he  had  of  making 
it,  has  given  rise  to  immense  criticism  :  but  the  assertion  itself  in 
what  way  soever  '  made,'  is  it  not  somewhat  of  a  solemn  one, 
somewhat  of  a  tremendous  one  ! 

And  now  do  but  contrast  this  Oliver  with  my  right  honourable 
friend  Sir  Jabesh  Windbag,  Mr.  Facing-both-ways,  Viscount 
Mealy  mouth,  Earl  of  Windlestraw,  or  what  other  Cagliostro, 
Cagliostiino,  Cagliostraccio,  the  course  of  Fortune,  and  Par- 
liamentary Majorities  has  constitutionally  guided  to  that  dignity, 
any  time  during  these  last  sorrowful  hundred  and  fifty  years ! 
Windbag,  weak  in  the  faith  of  a  God.  which  he  believes  only  at 
church  on  Sundays,  if  even  then;  strong  only  in  the  faith  that 
Paragraphs  and  Plausibilities  bring  votes :  that  Force  of  Public 
Opinion,  as  he  calls  it,  is  the  primal  Necessity  of  Things,  and 
highest  God  we  have:  — Windbag,  if  we  will  consider  him,  has 
a  problem  set  before  him  which  may  be  ranged  in  the  impossible 
class.  He  is  a  Columbus  minded  to  sail  to  the  indistinct  country 
of  Nowhere,  to  the  indistinct  country  of  Whitherward,  by  the 
friendship  of  those  same  waste-tumbling  Water- Alps  and  howling 
waltz  of  all  the  Winds  ;  —  not  by  conquest  of  them  and  in  spite 
of  them,  but  by  friendship  of  them,  when  once  they  have  made 
up  their  mind  !  He  is  the  most  original  Columbus  I  ever  saw. 
Nay,  his  problem  is  not  an  impossible  one  :  he  will  infallibly 
arrive  at  that  same  country  of  Nowhere  ;  his  indistinct  Whither- 
ward will  be  a  Thither-\xa.rd  !  In  the  ocean  abysses  and  locker  of 
Davy  Jones,  —  there  certainly  enough  do  he  and  his  ship's  com- 
pany, and  all  their  cargo  and  navigatings,  at  last  find  lodge- 
ment. 

Oliver  knew  that  his  America  lay  There,  Westward  Ho, — 
and  it  was  not  entirely  by  friendship  of  the  Water- Alps  and  yeasty 
insane  Froth-Oceans  that  he  meant  to  get  thither !  He  sailed  ac- 
cordingly ;  had  compass-card  and  rules  of  Navigation,  —  older  and 
greater  than  these  Froth-Oceans,  old  as  the  Eternal  God !  Or 
again,  do  but  think  of  this.  Windbag,  in  these  his  probable  five 
years  of  office,  has  to  prosper  and  get  Paragraphs  ;  the  Paragraphs 
of  these  five  years  must  be  his  salvation,  or  he  is  a  lost  man  ;  re- 
demption nowhere  in  the  Worlds  or  in  the  Times  discoverable  for 
him.     Oliver  too  would  like  his  Paragraphs,  Successes,  Popular- 


SIR    JAEESH    WINDBAG.  Wd 

ities  in  these  five  years  are  not  undesirable  to  him  :  but  mark,  I 
say,  this  enormous  circumstance  :  after  these  Five  Years  are  gone 
and  done,  comes  an  Eternity  for  Oliver !  Oliver  has  to  appear 
before  the  Most  High  Judge  :  the  utmost  flow  of  Paragraphs,  the 
utmost  ebb  of  them  is  now  in  strictest  arithmetic,  verily  no  matter 
at  all ;  its  exact  value  zero ;  an  account  altogether  erased ! 
Enormous  ;  —  which  a  man  in  these  days  hardly  fancies  with  an 
effort !  Oliver's  Paragraphs  are  all  done,  his  Battles,  Division- 
lists,  successes  all  summed  :  and  now  in  that  awful  unerring  Court 
of  Review,  the  real  question  first  rises,  Whether  he  has  succeeded 
at  all ;  whether  he  has  not  been  defeated  miserably  forevermore. 
Let  him  come  with  world-wide  Io-Pseans,  these  avail  him  not. 
Let  him  come  covered  over  with  the  world's  execrations,  gashed 
with  ignominious  death- wounds,  the  gallows-rope  about  his  neck  : 
what  avails  that?  The  word  is,  come  thou  brave  and  faithful; 
the  word  is,  Depart  thou  quack  and  accursed ! 

O  Windbag,  my  right  honourable  friend,  in  very  truth  I  pity 
thee.  I  say  these  Paragraphs,  and  low  or  loud  votings  of  thy 
poor  fellow-blockheads  of  mankind,  will  never  guide  thee  in  any 
enterprise  at  all.  Govern  a  country  on  such  guidance?  Thou 
canst  not  make  a  pair  of  shoes,  sell  a  pennyworth  of  tape,  on  such. 
No,  thy  shoes  are  vamped  up  falsely  to  meet  the  market ;  behold, 
the  leather  only  seemed  to  be  tanned  ;  thy  shoes  melt  under  me 
to  rubbishy  pulp,  and  are  not  veritable  mud-defying  shoes,  but 
plausible  vendible  similitudes  of  shoes,  — thou  unfortunate,  and  I  ! 
O  my  right  honourable  friend,  when  the  Paragraphs  flowed  in,  who 
was  like  Sir  Jabesh  ?  On  the  swelling  tide  he  mounted  ;  higher, 
higher,  triumphant,  heaven-high.  But  the  Paragraphs  again 
ebbed  out,  as  unwise  Paragraphs  needs  must :  Sir  Jabesh  lies 
stranded,  sunk  and  for  ever  sinking  in  ignominious  ooze ;  the 
Mud-Nymphs  and  ever-deepening  bottomless  Oblivion  his  portion 
to  eternal  time.  '  Posterity?  '  thou  appealest  to  Posterity,  thou? 
My  right  honourable  friend,  what  will  Posterity  do  for  thee ! 
The  voting  of  Posterity,  were  it  continued  through  centuries  in 
thy  favour,  will  be  quite  inaudible,  extra-forensic,  without  any 
effect  whatever.  Posterity  can  do  simply  nothing  for  a  man  ;  — 
nor  even  seem  to  do  much,  if  the  man  be  not  brainsick.  Besides 
to  tell  thee  truth,  the  bets  are  a  thousand  to  one,  Posterity  will 


22-4  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

not  hear  of  thee,  my  right  honourable  friend  !  Posterity,  I  have 
found,  has  generally  his  own  Windbags,  sufficiently  trumpeted  in 
all  market  places,  and  no  leisure  to  attend  to  ours.  Posterity, 
which  has  made  of  Norse  Odin  a  similitude,  and  of  Norman  Wil- 
liam a  brute  monster,  what  will  or  can  it  make  of  English  Jabesh  1 
O  Heavens,  'Posterity!'  —  "These  poor  persecuted  Scotch 
Covenanters,"  said  I  to  my  inquiring  Frenchman,  in  such  stinted 
French  as  stood  at  command,  "  ils  s'en  appelaient  a — "  "  A  la 
Posterite  !  "  interrupted  he,  helping  me  out.  —  "  O  que  non,  they 
appealed  to  the  Eternal  God  ;  not  to  Posterity  at  all !  Cetait 
different." 


CHAPTER  XV. 


MORRISON    AGAIN. 


Nevertheless,  O  Advanced  Liberal,  one  cannot  promise  thee 
any  '  new  Religion,'  for  some  time;  to  say  truth,  I  do  not  think 
we  have  the  smallest  chance  of  any  !  Will  the  candid  reader,  by 
way  of  closing  this  Book  Third,  listen  to  a  few  transient  remarks 
on  that  subject. 

Candid  readers  have  not  lately  met  with  any  man  who  had  less 
notion  to  interfere  with  their  Thirty -nine  or  other  Church  Arti- 
cles ;  wherewith,  very  helplessly  as  is  like,  they  may  have  strug- 
gled to  form  for  themselves  some  not  inconceivable  hypothesis 
about  this  Universe,  and  their  own  existence  there.  Superstition, 
my  friend,  is  far  from  me  ;  Fanaticism,  for  any  Fanum  likely  to 
arise  soon  on  this  Earth,  is  far.  A  man's  Church-Articles  are 
surely  articles  of  price  to  him ;  and  in  these  times  one  has  to  be 
tolerant  of  many  strange  '  Articles,'  and  of  many  still  stranger 
'No-articles,'  which  go  about  placarding  themselves  in  a  very 
distracted  manner,  —  the  numerous  long  placard-poles,  and  ques- 
tionable infirm  paste-pots,  interfering  with  one's  peaceable  tho- 
roughfare sometimes  ! 

Fancy  a  man,  moreover,  recommending  his  fellow  men  to  be- 
lieve in  God,  that  so  Chartism  may  abate,  and  the  Manchester 
Operatives  be  got  to  spin  peaceably  !  The  idea  is  more  distracted 
than  any  placard-pole  seen  hitherto  in  a  public  thoroughfare  of 
men  !  My  friend,  if  thou  ever  do  come  to  believe  in  God,  thou 
wilt  find  all  Chartism,  Manchester-riot,  Parliamentary  incompe- 
tence, Ministries  of  Windbag,  and  the  wildest  social  Dissolutions, 
and  the  burning  up  of  this  entire  Planet,  a  most  small  matter  in 
comparison.  Brother,  this  Planet,  I  find,  is  but  an  inconsiderable 
sandgrain  in  the  continents  of  Being  :  this  Planet's  poor  tempo- 


226  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

rary  interests,  thy  interests  and  my  interests  there,  when  I  look 
fixedly  into  that  eternal  Light-Sea  and  Flame-Sea  with  its  eternal 
interests,  dwindle  literally  into  Nothing;  my  Speech  of  it  is  — 
Silence  for  the  while.  I  will  as  soon  think  of  making  Galaxies 
and  Star-Systems  to  guide  little  herring  vessels  by,  as  of  preach- 
ing Religion  that  the  Constable  may  continue  possible.  O  my 
Advanced  Liberal  friend,  this  new  second  progress,  of  proceeding 
'  to  invent  God,'  is  a  very  strange  one  !  Jacobinism  unfolded  into 
Saint  Simonism  bodes  innumerable  blessed  things;  but  the  thing 
itself  might  draw  tears  from  a  Stoic  !  -—  As  for  me,  some  twelve 
or  thirteen  New  Religions,  heavy  Packets,  most  of  them  un- 
franked,  having  arrived  here  from  various  parts  of  the  world,  in  a 
space  of  six  calendar  months,  I  have  instructed  my  invaluable 
friend  the  Stamped  Postman  to  introduce  no  more  of  them,  if  the 
charge  exceed  one  penny. 

Henry  of  Essex,  dwelling'  in  that  Thames  Island,  '  near  to 
Reading  Abbey  '  had  a  religion.  But  was  it  in  virtue  of  his  see- 
ing armed  Phantasms  of  St.  Edmund  '  on  the  rim  of  the  horizon,' 
looking  minatory  on  him?  Had  that,  intrinsically,  anything  to  do 
with  his  religion  at  all?  Henry  of  Essex's  religion  was  the  Inner 
Light  or  moral  Conscience,  of  his  own  Soul ;  such  as  is  vouch- 
safed still  to  all  souls  of  men  ;  —  which  Inner  Light  shone  here 
'  through  such  intellectual  and  other  media  '  as  then  wTere  ;  pro- 
ducing '  Phantasms  '  Kircherean  visual-spectra,  according  to  cir- 
cumstances!  It  is  so  with  all  men.  The  clearer  my  Inner  Light 
may  shine,  through  the  less  turbid  media  ;  the  fewer  Phantasms  it 
may  produce, — the  gladder  surely  shall  I  be,  and  not  the  sorrier  ! 
Hast  thou  reflected,  0  serious  reader,  Advanced-Liberal  or  other, 
that  the  one  end,  essence,  use  of  all  religion  past,  present  and  to 
come,  was  this  only  :  to  keep  that  same  moral  conscience  or  In- 
ner Light  of  our's  alive  and  shining  ;  —  which  certainly  the 
'  Phantasms '  and  the  '  turbid  media '  were  not  essential  for  ! 
All  religion  was  here  to  remind  us,  better  or  worse,  of  what  we 
already  know  better  or  worse,  of  the  quite  infinite  difference  there 
is  between  a  Good  man  and  a  Bad  ;  to  bid  us  love  infinitely  the 
one,  abhor  and  avoid  infinitely  the  other,  —  strive  infinitely  to  be 
the   one,  and  not  to  be  the  other  !     '  All  religion  issues  in  due 


MORRISON    AGAIN.  227 

Practical  Hero-Worship.'  He  that  has  a  soul  unasphyxied  will 
never  want  a  religion  ;  he  that  has  a  soul  asphyxied,  reduced  to 
a  succedaneum  for  salt,  will  never  find  any  religion,  though  you 
rose  from  the  dead  to  preach  him  one. 

But  indeed  when  men  and  reformers  ask  for  '  a  religion,'  it  is 
analogous  to  their  asking,  '  What  would  you  have  us  do  ?  '  and 
such  like.  They  fancy  that  their  religion  too  shall  be  a  kind  of 
Morrison's  Pill,  which  they  have  only  to  swallow  once,  and  all 
will  be  well.  Resolutely  once  gulp  down  your  religion,  your 
Morrison's  Pill,  you  have  it  all  plain  sailing  now  ;  you  can  follow 
your  affairs,  your  no-affairs,  go  along  money-hunting,  pleasure- 
hunting,  dilettanteing,  dangling,  and  miming  and  chattering  like 
a  Dead-Sea  Ape  :  your  Morrison  will  do  your  business  for  you. 
Men's  notions  are  very  strange  !  Brother,  I  say,  there  is  not, 
was  not,  nor  will  ever  be,  in  the  wide  circle  of  Nature,  any  Pill 
or  Religion  of  that  character.  Man  cannot  afford  thee  such  ;  for 
the  very  gods  it  is  impossible.  I  advise  thee  to  renounce  Morri- 
son ;  once  for  all,  quit  hope  of  the  Universal  Pill.  For  body,  for 
soul,  for  individual,  or  society,  there  has  not  any  such  article  been 
made.  Non  extat.  In  created  Nature  it  is  not,  was  not,  will  not 
be.  In  the  void  imbroglios  of  Chaos  only  and  realms  of  Bedlam, 
does  some  shadow  of  it  hover,  to  bewilder  and  bemock  the  poor 
inhabitants  there. 

Rituals,  Liturgies,  Creeds,  Hierarchies  :  all  this  is  not  religion  ; 
all  this,  were  it  dead  as  Odinism,  as  Fetishism,  does  not  kill  reli- 
gion at  all  !  It  is  Stupidity  alone,  with  never  so  many  rituals, 
that  kills  religion.  Is  not  this  still  a  World?  Spinning  Cotton 
under  Arkwright  and  Adam  Smith  ;  founding  cities  by  the  Foun- 
tain of  Juturna  on  the  Janiculum  mount ;  tilling  Canaans  under 
Prophet  Samuel  and  Psalmist  David,  man  is  ever  man  ;  the  mis- 
sionary of  Unseen  Powers  ;  and  great  and  victorious,  while  he 
continues  true  to  his  mission  ;  mean,  miserable,  foiled,  and  at  last 
annihilated  and  trodden  out  of  sight  and  memory,  when  he  proves 
untrue.  Brother,  thou  art  a  man,  I  think  ;  thou  art  not  a  mere 
building  Beaver  or  two-legged  Cotton-Spider  ;  thou  hast  verily  a 
soul  in  thee,  asphyxied  or  otherwise  !  Sooty  Manchester,  it  too 
is  built  on  the  infinite  Abysses,  overspanned  by  the  skyey  Firma- 
ments ;  and  there  is  birth  in  it,   and  death  in  it ;  —  and  it  is  every 


228  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

whit  as  wonderful,  as  fearful,  unimaginable,  as  the  oldest  Salem 
or  Prophetic  City.  Go  or  stand,  in  what  time  in  what  place  we 
will,  are  there  not  Immensities,  Eternities  over  us,  around  us,  in 
us  : 

!  Solemn  before  us, 

Veiled,  the  dark  Portal, 

Goal  of  all  mortal  :  — 

Stars  silent  rest  o'er  us, 

Graves  under  us  silent ! ' 

Between  these  two  great  silences,  the  hum  of  all  our  spinning 
cylinders,  Trades  Unions,  Anti-Corn-Law  Leagues  and  Carlton 
Clubs  goes  on.  Stupidity  itself  ought  to  pause  a  little,  and  con- 
sider that.  I  tell  thee,  through  all  thy  Ledgers,  Supply-and-demand 
Philosophies,  and  daily  most  modern  melancholy  Business  and 
Cant,  there  does  shine  the  presence  of  a  Primeval  Unspeakable,  — 
and  thou  wert  wise  to  recognise,  not  with  lips  only,  that  same ! 
The  Maker's  Laws,  whether  they  are  promulgated  in  Sinai 
Thunder,  to  the  ear  or  imagination,  or  quite  otherwise  promul- 
gated, are  the  Laws  of  God  ;  transcendent,  everlasting,  impera- 
tively demanding  obedience  from  all  men.  This,  without  any 
thunder,  or  with  never  so  much  thunder,  thou,  if  there  be  any  soul 
left  in  thee,  canst  know  of  a  truth.  The  Universe,  I  say,  is  made 
by  Law  ;  the  great  soul  of  the  world  is  just  and  not  unjust. 
Look  thou,  if  thou  have  eyes  or  soul  left,  into  this  great  shoreless 
Incomprehensible  :  in  the  heart  of  its  tumultuous  Appearances, 
Embroilments,  and  mad  Time-vortexes,  is  there  not.  silent,  eter- 
nal, an  All-just,  an  All-beautiful  sole  Reality  and  ultimate  con- 
trolling Power  of  the  whole  ?  This  is  not  a  figure  of  speech  ;  this 
is  a  fact.  The  Fact  of  Gravitation,  known  to  all  animals,  is  not 
surer  than  this  inner  Fact,  which  may  be  known  to  all  men.  He 
who  knows  this,  it  will  sink,  silent,  awful  unspeakable  into  his 
heart.  He  will  say  with  Faust :  "  Who  dare  name  Him  ?  "  Most 
rituals  or  '  namings  '  he  will  fall  in  with  at  present,  are  like  to  be 
1  namings  '  —  which  shall  be  nameless  !  In  silence,  in  the  Eternal 
Temple,  let  him  worship,  if  there  be  no  fit  word.  Such  knowl- 
edge, the  crown  of  his  whole  spiritual  being,  the  life  of  his  life, 
let  him  keep  and  sacredly  walk  by.  He  has  a  religion.  Hourly 
and   daily,  for  himself  and  for  the  whole  world,  a  faithful,  un- 


MORRISON    AGAIN.  229 

spoken  but  not  ineffectual  prayer  rises,  "  Thy  will  be  done." 
His  whole  work  on  Earth  is  an  emblematic  spoken  or  acted  prayer, 
Be  the  will  of  God  done  on  Earth  ;  —  not  the  Devil's  will,  or  any 
of  the  Devil's  servants'  wills  !  He  has  a  religion,  this  man  ;  an 
everlasting  loadstar,  that  beams  the  brighter  in  the  Heavens,  the 
darker  here  on  Earth  grows  the  night  around  him.  Thou,  if  thou 
know  not  this,  what  are  all  rituals,  liturgies,  mythologies,  mass- 
chauntings,  turnings  of  the  rotatory  Calabash  ?  They  are  as 
nothing  ;  in  a  good  many  respects,  they  are  less.  Divorced  from 
this,  getting  half-divorced  from  this,  they  are  a  thing  to  fill  one 
with  a  kind  of  horror  ;  with  a  sacred  inexpressible  pity  and  fear. 
The  most  tragical  thing  a  human  eye  can  look  on.  It  was  said  to 
the  Prophet  "  Behold,  I  will  shew  thee  worse  things  than  these  : 
women  weeping  to  Thammuz."  That  was  the  acme  of  the 
Prophet's  vision,  —  then  as  now. 

Rituals,  Liturgies,  Credos,  Sinai  Thunder :  I  know  more  or 
less  the  history  of  these  ;  the  rise,  progress,  decline  and  fall  of 
these.  Can  Thunder  from  all  the  thirty-two  azimuths,  repeated 
daily  for  centuries  of  years,  make  God's  Laws  more  godlike  to 
me  1  Brother,  No.  Perhaps  I  am  grown  to  be  a  man  now  ;  and 
do  not  need  the  thunder  and  the  terror  any  longer !  Perhaps  I  am 
above  being  frightened ;  perhaps  it  is  not  Fear  but  Reverence 
alone  that  shall  now  lead  me  !  —  Revelations,  Inspirations  1  Yes  : 
and  thy  own  godcreated  Soul  ;  dost  thou  not  call  that  a  '  revela- 
tion ?  '  Who  made  thee?  Where  diust  thou  come  from?  The 
Voice  of  Eternity,  if  thou  be  not  a  blasphemer  and  poor  asphyx- 
ied  mute,  speaks  with  that  tongue  of  thine  !  Thou  art  the  latest 
Birth  of  Nature  ;  it  is  '  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty  '  that 
giveth  thee  understanding  !  My  brother,  my  brother  !  — 

Under  baleful  Atheism,  Mammonisms,  Joe-Manton  Dilettan- 
tisms, with  their  appropriate  Cants  and  Idolisms,  and  whatsoever 
scandalous  rubbish  obscures  and  all  but  extinguishes  the  soul  of 
Man,  — religion  now  is  ;  its  Laws,  written  if  not  on  Stone  Ta- 
bles, yet  on  the  Azure  of  Infinitude,  in  the  inner  heart  of  God's 
Creation,  certain  as  Life,  certain  as  Death  !  I  say  the  Laws  are 
there,  and  thou  shalt  not  disobey  them.  It  were  better  for  thee 
not.  Better  a  hundred  deaths  than  yes.  Terrible  '  penalties  ' 
withal,  if  thou  still  need  '  penalties,'  are  there  for  disobeying. 
20 


230  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

Dost  thou  observe.  0  redtape  Politician,  that  fiery  infernal  Phe- 
nomenon, which  men  name  French  Revolution,  sailing,  un- 
looked-for unbidden,  through  thy  inane  Protocol  Dominion  ;  —  far- 
seen,  with  splendour  not  of  Heaven  ?  Ten  centuries  will  see  it. 
There  were  Tanneries  at  Meudon  for  human  skins.  And  Hell, 
very  truly  Hell,  had  power  over  God's  upper  Earth  for  a  season. 
The  cruellest  Portent  that  has  risen  into  created  space  these  ten 
centuries  :  let  us  hail  it,  with  awestruck  repentant  hearts,  as  the 
voice  once  more  of  a  God,  though  of  one  in  wrath.  Blessed  be  the 
God*s  voice  ;  for  it  is  true,  and  Falsehoods  have  to  cease  before 
it  !  But  for  that  same  preternatural  quasi-infernal  Portent,  one 
could  not  know  what  to  make  of  this  wretched  world  in  these 
days  at  all.  The  deplorablest  quack-ridden,  and  now  hunger-rid- 
den, downtrodden  Despicability  and  Thbile  ludibrium  of  redtape 
Protocols,  rotatory  Calabashes,  Poor  Law  Bastilles  :  who  is  there 
that  could  think  of  its  being  fated  to  continue  ?  — 

Penalties  enough,  my  brother  !  This  penalty  inclusive  of  all  : 
al  Death  to  thy  own  hapless  Self,  if  thou  heed  no  other. 
Eternal  Death,  I  say,  —  with  many  meanings  old  and  new,  of 
which  let  this  single  one  suffice  us  here  :  The  eternal  impossibil- 
ity for  thee  to  be  aught  but  a  Chimera,  and  swift-vanishing  decep- 
tive Phantasm,  in  God's  Creation;  —  swift-vanishing,  never  to 
reappear  :  why  should  it  reappear  !  Thou  hadst  one  chance, 
thou  wilt  never  have  another.  Everlasting  ages  will  roll  on,  and 
no  other  be  given  thee.  The  foolishest  articulate-speaking  soul 
now  extant,  may  not  he  say  to  himself:  "A  whole  Eternity  I 
d  to  be  born  ;  and  now  I  have  a  whole  Eternity  waiting  to 
see  what  I  will  do  when  born  !  "  This  is  not  Theology,  this  is 
Arithmetic.  And  thou  but  half-discernest  this;  thou  but  half- 
believest  it  ?  Alas,  on  the  shores  of  the  Dead  Sea  on  Sabbath, 
there  goes  on  a  tragedv  '  — 

But  we  will  leave  this  of  Religion  ;  ?  of  which,  to  say  truth,  it 
is  chiefly  profitable,  in  these  unspeakable  days,  to  keep  silence. 
Thou  needest  no  *  Xew  Religion  ;  '  nor  art  thou  like  to  get  any. 
Thou  hast  already  more  '  religion '  than  thou  makest  use  of. 
This  day,  thou  knowest  ten  commanded  duties,  seest  in  thy  mind 
ten  things  which  should  be  done,  for  one  that  thou  doest !  Do 
one  of  them  ;  this  of  itself  will  shew  thee  ten  others  which  can 


MORRISON    AGAIN.  231 

and  shall  be  done.  "But  my  future  fate?"  Yes,  thy  future 
fate,  indeed  !  Thy  future  fate,  while  thou  makest  it  the  chief 
question,  seems  to  me  —  extremely  questionable  !  I  do  not  think 
it  can  be  good.  Norse  Odin,  immemorial  centuries  ago,  did  not 
he,  though  a  poor  Heathen,  in  the  dawn  of  Time  teach  us  that, 
for  the  Dastard,  there  was  and  could  be  no  good  fate,  —  no  har- 
bour anywhere  save  down  with  Hela,  in  the  pool  of  Night  ! 
Dastards,  knaves,  are  they  that  lust  for  Pleasure,  that  tremble  at 
Pain.  For  this  world  and  for  the  next,  Dastards  are  a  class  of 
creatures  made  to  be  '  arrested  ; '  they  are  good  for  nothing  else, 
can  look  for  nothing  else.  A  greater  than  Odin  has  been  here. 
A  greater  than  Odin  has  taught  us  —  not  a  greater  Dastardism,  I 
hope  !  My  brother,  thou  must  pray  for  a  soul:  struggle,  as  with 
life  and  death  energy,  to  get  back  thy  soul !  Know  that '  religion  ' 
is  no  Morrison's  Pill  from  without,  but  a  reawakening  of  thy  own 
Self  from  "within  :  —  and  above  all  leave  me  alone  of  thy  '  reli- 
gions '  and  '  new  religions  '  here  and  elsewhere  !  I  am  weary  of 
this  sick  croaking  for  a  Morrison' s-Pill  religion  ;  for  any  and  for 
every  such.  I  want  none  such  ;  and  discern  all  such  to  be  im- 
possible. The  resuscitation  of  old  liturgies  fallen  dead  ;  much 
more  the  manufacture  of  new  liturgies  that  will  never  be  alive  : 
how  hopeless  !  Stylitisms,  eremite  fanaticisms,  and  fakeerisms  ; 
spasmodic  agonistic  posture-makings,  and  narrow,  cramped,  mor- 
bid, if  forever  noble  wrestlings  :  all  this  is  not  a  thing  desirable  to 
me.  It  is  a  thing  the  world  has  done  once,  —  when  its  beard  was 
not  grown  as  now  ! 

And  yet  there  is,  at  worst,  one  Liturgy  which  does  remain 
forever  unexceptionable  :  that  of  Praying  (as  the  old  monks  did 
withal)  by  Working.  And  indeed  the  Prayer  which  accomplish- 
ed itself  in  special  chapels  at  stated  hours,  and  went  not  with  a  man, 
rising  up  from  all  his  Work  and  Action,  at  all  moments  sancti- 
fying the  same,  —  what  was  it  ever  good  for?  '  Work  is  Wor- 
ship ' :  yes,  in  a  highly  considerable  sense,  —  which,  in  the  pres- 
ent state  of  all  '  worship,'  who  is  there  that  can  unfold  !  He  that 
understands  it  well,  understands  the  Prophecy  of  the  whole  Fu- 
ture ;  the  last  Evangel,  which  has  included  all  others.  Its  Cathe- 
dral the  Dome  of  Immensity,  —  hast  thou  seen  it :    coped  with 


232  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

star-galaxies  ;  paved  with  the  green  mosaic  of  Land  and  Ocean  ; 
and  for  altar,  verily  the  star-throne  of  the  Eternal !  Its  Litany 
and  psalmody  the  noble  acts,  the  heroic  work  and  suffering,  and 
true  heart-utterance  of  all  the  Valiant  of  the  Sons  of  Men.  Its 
choir-music  the  ancient  winds  and  oceans,  and  deep-toned,  inartic- 
ulate, but  most  speaking  voices  of  Destiny  and  History,  supernal 
ever  as  of  old.     Between  two  great  Silences 

'  Stars  silent  rest  o'er  us, 
Graves  under  us  silent.' 

Between  which  two  great  Silences,  do  not,  as  we  said,  all  human 
Noises,  in  the  naturalest  times,  most  prefer  naturally  march  and 
roll?  — 

I  will  insert  this  also,  in  a  lower  strain,  from  Sauerteig's  JSsthe- 
tische  Springwiirzel.  l  Worship  '  says  he  :  '  Before  that  inane  tu- 
tumult  of  Hearsay  filled  men's  heads,  while  the  world  lay  yet 
silent,  and  the  heart  true  and  open,  many  things  were  worship  ! 
To  the  primeval  man  whatsoever  good  cause,  descended  on  him 
(as  in  mere  fact,  it  ever  does)  direct  from  God  ;  whatsoever  duty 
lay  visible  for  him,  this  a  Supreme  God  had  prescribed.  To  the 
present  hour  I  ask  thee,  Who  else  ?  For  the  primeval  man,  in  whom 
dwelt  Thought,  this  Universe  was  all  a  Temple  ;  Life  everywhere 
a  Worship. 

'  What  worship,  for  example,  is  there  not  in  mere  washing  ! 
Perhaps  one  of  the  most  moral  things  a  man,  ia  common  cases, 
has  it  in  his  power  to  do.  Strip  thyself,  go  into  the  bath,  or  were 
it  into  limpid  pool  and  running  brook,  and  there  wash  and  be 
clean,  —  thou  wilt  step  out  again  a  purer  and  a  better  man.  This 
consciousness  of  perfect  outer  pureness,  that  to  thy  skin  there 
now  adheres  no  foreign  speck  of  imperfection,  how  it  radiates  in 
on  thee,  with  cunning  symbolic  influences  to  thy  very  soul !  Thou 
hast  an  increase  of  tendency  towards  all  good  things  whatsoever. 
The  oldest  Eastern  Sages,  with  joy  and  holy  gratitude,  had  felt  it 
so,  —  and  that  it  was  the  Maker's  gift  and  will.  Whose  else  is 
it?  It  remains  a  religious  duty,  from  oldest  times,  in  the  East.  — 
Nor  could  Herr  Professor  Strauss,  when  I  put  the  question,  deny 
that  for  us  at  present  it  is  still  such  here  in  the  West !  To  that 
dingy  fuliginous  operative,  emerging  from  his  soot-mill,  what  is 


MORRISON    AGAIN.  233 

the  first  duty  I  will  prescribe,  and  offer  help  towards?  That  he 
clean  the  skin  of  him.  Can  he  pray,  by  any  ascertained  method'? 
One  knows  not  entirely: — but  with  soap  and  a  sufficiency  of 
water,  he  can  wash.  Even  the  dull  English  feel  something-  of 
this  ;  they  have  a  saying  "  Cleanliness  is  near  of  kin  to  Godli- 
ness :  "  —  yet  never,  in  any  country,  saw  I  operative  men  work 
washed,  and,  in  a  climate  drenched  with  the  softest  cloud-water, 
such  a  scarcity  of  baths  !"  '  —  Alas,  Sauerteig,  our  'operative 
men  '  are  at  present  short  even  of  potatoes  :  what  '  duty '  can  you 
prescribe  to  them ! 

Or  let  us  give  a  glance  at  China.  Our  new  friend,  the  Emperor 
there,  is  Pontiff  of  three  hundred  million  men  ;  who  do  all  live 
and  work,  these  many  centuries  now,  authentically  patronized  by 
Heaven  so  far  ;  and  therefore  must  have  some  '  religion  '  of  a  kind. 
This  Emperor-Pontiff  has,  in  fact,  a  religious  belief  of  certain 
Laws,  Laws  of  Heaven  ;  observes  with  a  religious  rigour  his 
'three  thousand  punctualities,'  —  given  out  by  men  of  insight, 
some  sixty  generations  since,  as  a  legible  transcript  of  the  same, 
—  the  Heavens  do  seem  to  say,  not  totally  an  incorrect  one.  He 
has  not  much  of  a  ritual,  this  Pontiff-Emperor ;  believes,  it  is  like, 
with  the  old  Monks,  that  '  Labour  is  Worship.'  His  most  public 
Act  of  Worship,  it  appears,  is  the  drawing  solemnly  at  a  certain 
day,  on  the  green  bosom  of  our  Mother  Earth,  when  the  Heav- 
ens, after  dead  black  winter,  have  again  with  their  vernal  radi- 
ances awakened  her,  a  distinct  red  Furrow  with  the  Plough,  — 
signal  that  all  the  Ploughs  of  China  are  to  begin  ploughing  and 
worshipping  !  It  is  notable  enough.  He,  in  sight  of  the  Seen 
and  Unseen  Powers,  draws  his  distinct  red  Furrow  there,  —  say- 
ing, and  praying,  in  mute  symbolism,  so  many  most  eloquent 
things  ! 

If  you  ask  this  Pontiff  "Who  made  him?  what  is  to  become 
of  him  and  us?"  he  maintains  a  dignified  reserve,  —  waves  his 
hand  and  pontiff-eyes  over  the  unfathomable  deep  of  Heaven,  the 
'  Tsien'  the  azure  kingdoms  of  Infinitude  ;  as  if  asking,  "  Is  it 
doubtful  that  we  are  right  well  made  ?  Can  aught  that  is  wrong 
become  of  us  ?  "  —  He  and  his  three  hundred  millions,  it  is  their 
chief  '  punctuality,'  visit  yearly  the  Tombs  of  their  Fathers  ; 
each  man  the  Tomb  of  his  Father  and  his  Mother  :  alone  there, 
20* 


234  THE   MODERN    WORKER, 

in  silence,  with  what  of  '  worship  '  or  other  thought  there  may 
be,  pauses  solemnly  each  man  ;  the  dhine  skies  all  silent  over 
him ;  the  divine  Graves,  and  this  divinest  Grave,  all  silent  under 
him,  —  the  pulsings  of  his  own  soul,  if  he  have  any  soul,  alone 
audible.  Truly  it  may  be  a  kind  of  worship  !  Truly,  if  a  man 
cannot  get  some  glimpse  into  the  Eternities,  looking  through  this 
portal,  —  through  what  other  need  he  try  it ! 

Our  friend  the  PonthT  Emperor  permits  cheerfully,  though  with 
contempt,  all  manner  of  Buddists,  Bonzes,  Talapoins  and  such 
like,  to  build  brick  Temples,  on  the  voluntary  principle  ;  to  wor- 
ship with  what  of  chauntings,  paper-lanterns  and  tumultuous 
brayings  pleases  them,  and  make  night  hideous,  — since  they  find 
some  comfort  in  it.  Cheerfully,  though  with  contempt.  He  is  a 
wiser  Pontiff  than  many  persons  think  !  He  is  as  yet  the  one 
Chief  Potentate  or  Priest  in  this  Earth  who  has  made  a  distinct 
systematic  attempt  at  what  we  call  the  ultimate  result  of  all  reli- 
gion, Practical  Hero-worship  :  he  does  incessantly,  with  true 
anxiety,  in  such  way  as  he  can,  search  and  sift  (it  would  appear) 
his  whole  enormous  population  for  the  Wisest  born  among  them  ; 
by  which  Wisest,  as  by  born  kings,  these  three  hundred  million 
men  are  governed.  The  Heavens,  to  a  certain  extent,  do  appear 
to  countenance  him.  These  Three  hundred  millions  actually 
make  porcelain,  Souchong  tea,  with  innumerable  other  things  ; 
and  fight,  under  Heaven's  flag  against  Necessity  ;  —  and  have 
fewer  Seven-years'  Wars,  Thirty-years'  Wars,  French  Revolu- 
tion Wars,  and  infernal  fightings  with  each  other,  than  certain 
millions  elsewhere  have  ! 

Nay  in  our  poor  distracted  Europe  itself,  in  these  newest  times, 
have  there  not  religious  voices  risen,  — with  a  religion  new  and 
yet  the  oldest;  entirely  indisputable  to  all  hearts  of  men?  Some 
I  do  know,  who  did  not  call  or  think  themselves  '  Prophets,'  far 
enough  from  that ;  but  who  wTere,  in  very  truth,  melodious  Voices 
from  the  eternal  Heart  of  Nature  once  again  ;  souls  forever  vene- 
rable to  all  that  have  a  soul.  A  French  Revolution  is  one  phe- 
nomenon ;  as  complement  and  spiritual  exponent  thereof,  a  Poet 
Goethe  and  German  Literature  is  to  me  another.  The  old  Secu- 
lar or  Practical  World,  so  to  speak,  having  gone  up  in  fire,  is  not 


MORRISON    AGAIN.  235 

here  the  prophecy  and  dawn  of  a  new  Spiritual  World,  parent  of 
far  nobler,  wider  new  Practical  worlds  1  A  life  of  Antique  de- 
voutness,  Antique  veracity  and  heroism,  has  again  become  possible, 
is  again  seen  actual  there  for  the  most  modern  man.  A  phenom- 
enon, as  quiet  as  it  is,  comparable  for  greatness  to  no  other  ! 
'  The  great  Event  for  the  world  is,  now  as  always,  the  arrival  in 
it  of  a  new  Wise  Man.'  Touches  there  are,  be  the  Heavens  ever 
thanked,  of  new  Sphere-melody ;  audible  once  more  in  the  infi- 
nite jargoning  discords  and  poor  scrannel-pipings  of  the  thing 
called  Literature,  —  priceless  there,  as  the  voice  of  new  Heavenly 
Psalms  !  Literature,  like  the  old  Prayer-collections  of  the  first 
centuries,  were  it  '  well  selected  from  and  burnt,'  has  precious 
things!  For  Literature,  with  all  its  printing-presses,  puffing-en- 
gines and  shoreless  deafening  triviality,  is  yet  '  the  Thought  of 
Thinking  Souls.'  A  sacred  '  religion,'  if  you  like  the  name, 
does  live  in  the  heart  of  that  strange  froth-ocean,  not  wholly  froth, 
what  we  call  Literature  ;  and  will  more  and  more  disclose  itself 
therefrom  :  —  not  now  as  scorching  fire  :  the  red  smoky  scorching 
fire  has  purified  itself  into  white  sunny  Light.  Is  not  Light 
grander  than  Fire  1     It  is  the  same  element  in  a  state  of  purity. 

My  candid  readers,  we  will  march  out  of  this  Third  Book 
with  a  rythmic  word  of  Goethe's  on  our  tongue  ;  a  word  which 
perhaps  has  already  sung  itself,  in  dark  hours  and  in  bright, 
through  many  a  heart.  To  me,  finding  it  devout  yet  whole,  cred- 
ible and  veritable,  full  of  piety  yet  free  of  cant ;  to  me  joyfully 
finding  much  in  it,  and  joyfully  missing  so  much  in  it,  this  little 
snatch  of  music  by  the  greatest  German  Man,  sounds  like  a  stanza 
in  the  grand  Road-Song  and  Marching-Song  of  our  great  Teu- 
tonic kindred  wending,  wending,  valiant  and  victorious,  through 
the  undiscovered  Deeps  of  Time  !  He  calls  it  Mason  Lodge,  — 
not  Psalm  or  Hymn  : 

'  The  Mason's  ways  are 
A  type  of  Existence, 
And  his  persistance 
Is  as  the  days  are 
Of  Men  in  this  world. 


236  THE    MODERN    WORKER. 

The  Future  hides  in  it 
Good  hap  and  sorrow; 
We  press  still  thorow, 
Nought  that  abides  in  it 
Daunting  us, —  onward. 

And  solemn  before  us, 
Veiled,  the  dark  Portal, 
Goal  of  all  mortal :  — 
Stars  silent  rest  o'er  us, 
Graves  under  us  silent. 

But  heard  are  the  Voices, 
Voice  of  the  Sages, 
The  Worlds  and  the  Ages  : 
"  Choose  well,  your  choice  is 
Brief  and  yet  endless  ; 

Here  eyes  do  regard  you, 
Iu  Eternity's  stillness  ; 
Here  is  all  fulness, 
Ye  brave,  to  reward  you  ; 
Work  and  despair  not."' 


BOOK  IV. 

HOROSCOPE, 


CHAPTER  I. 


ARISTOCRACIES. 


To  predict  the  Future,  to  manage  the  Present,  would  not  be  so 
impossible,  had  not  the  Past  been  so  sacrilegiously  mishandled  ; 
effaced,  and  what  is  worse,  defaced  !  The  Past  cannot  be  seen  ; 
the  Past,  looked  at  through  the  medium  of '  Philosophical  History  ' 
in  these  times,  cannot  even  be  not  seen  :  it  is  misseen  ;  affirmed 
to  have  existed,  —  and  to  have  been  a  godless  Impossibility. 
Your  Norman  Conquerors,  true  royal  souls,  crowned  kings  as 
such,  were  vulturous  irrational  Tyrants  :  your  Becket  was  a 
noisy  Egoist  and  Hypocrite  ;  getting  his  brains  spilt  on  the  floor 
of  Canterbury  Cathedral,  to  secure  the  main  chance,  — somewhat 
uncertain  how!  "  Enthusiasm "  and  even  "honest  Enthusi- 
asm,"—  yes,  of  course  : 

{  The  Dog,  to  gain  his  private  ends, 
Went  mad  ;  and  bit  the  man  ! '  — 

For  in  truth,  the  eye  sees  in  all  things  what  it  brought  with  it  the 
means  of  seeing.  A  godless  century,  looking  back  on  centuries 
that  were  godly,  produces  portraitures,  more  miraculous  than  any 
other.  All  was  inane  discord  in  the  Past ;  brute  force  bore  rule 
everywhere;  Stupidity,  savage  unreason,  fitter  for  Bedlam  than 
for  a  human  world  !  Whereby  indeed  it  becomes  sufficiently 
natural  that  the  like  qualities,  in  new  sleeker  habiliments, 
should  continue  in  our  own  time  to  rule.  Millions  enchanted  in 
Bastille  Workhouses  ;  Irish  widows  proving  their  relationship  by 
typhus  fever  :  what  would  you  have1?  It  was  ever  so,  or  worse. 
Man's  History,  was  it  not  always  even  this  :  The  cookery  and 
eating  up  of  imbecile  Dupedom  by  successful  Quackhood  ;  the  bat- 


240  HOROSCOPE. 

tie,  with  various  weapons,  of  vulturous  Quack  and  Tyrant  against 
vulturous  Tyrant  and  Quack  !  No  God  was  in  the  Past  Time  ; 
nothing  but  Mechanisms  and  chaotic  Brute  Gods  :  —  how  shall 
the  poor  '  Philosophic  Historian,'  to  whom  his  own  century  is  all 
godless,  see  any  God  in  other  centuries  ?  — 

Men  believe  in  Bibles,  and  disbelieve  in  them  :  but  of  all  Bibles 
the  frightfullest  to  disbelieve  in,  is  this  '  Bible  of  Universal  His- 
tory.' This  is  the  Eternal  Bible  and  God's  Book,  '  which  every 
born  man,'  till  once  the  soul  and  eyesight  are  extinguished  in  him, 
'  can  and  must  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  God's-Finger  writing?  ' 
To  discredit  this  is  an  infidelity  like  no  other.  Such  infidelity 
you  would  punish,  if  not  by  fire  and  fagot,  which  are  difficult  to 
manage  in  our  times,  yet  by  the  most  peremptory  order,  to  hold 
its  peace  till  it  got  something  wiser  to  say.  Why  should  the 
blessed  Silence  be  broken  into  noises  to  communicate  only  the 
like  of  this?  If  the  Past  have  no  God's-Eeason  in  it,  nothing  but 
Devil's-Unreason,  let  the  Past  be  eternally  forgotten  :  mention  it 
no  more  ;  — we  whose  ancestors  were  all  hanged,  why  should  we 
talk  of  ropes  ! 

It  is,  in  brief,  not  true  that  men  ever  lived  by  Delirium,  Hypo- 
crisy, Injustice,  or  any  form  of  Unreason,  since  they  came  to 
inhabit  this  Planet.  It  is  not  true  that  they  ever  did,  or  ever  will, 
live  except  by  the  reverse  of  these.  Men  will  again  be  taught 
this.  Their  acted  History  will  then  again  be  a  Heroism  ;  their 
written  History,  what  it  once  was,  an  Epic.  Nay  forever  it  is 
either  such;  or  else  it  virtually  is  —  Nothing.  Were  it  written 
in  a  thousand  volumes,  the  unheroism  of  such  volumes  hastens 
incessantly  to  be  forgotten  ;  the  net  content  of  an  Alexandrian 
Library  of  Unheroics  is,  and  will  ultimately  shew  itself  to  be, 
zero.  What  man  is  interested  to  remember  it ;  have  not  all  men, 
at  all  times,  the  liveliest  interest  to  forget  it?  — '  Revelations,'  if 
not  celestial  then  infernal,  will  teach  us  that  God  is  ;  we  shall 
then,  if  needful,  discern  without  difficulty  that  He  has  always 
been  !  The  Dryasdust  Philosophisms  and  enlightened  Scepticisms 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  historical  and  other,  will  have  to  sur- 
vive for  a  while  with  the  Physiologists,  —  as  a  memorable  Night- 
mare Dream.  All  this  haggard  epoch  with  its  ghastly  Doctrines, 
and  death's  head  Philosophies  '  teaching  by  example  '  or  other- 


ARISTOCRACIES.  241 

wise,  will  one  day  have  become,  what  to  our  Moslem  friends  their 
godless  ages  are,  the  '  Period  of  Ignorance.' 

If  the  convulsive  struggles  of  the  last  Half-century  have  taught 
poor  struggling  convulsed  Europe  any  truth,  it  may  perhaps  be 
this  as  the  extreme  of  innumerable  others  :  That  Europe  requires 
a  real  Aristocracy,  a  real  Priesthood,  or  it  cannot  continue  to 
exist.  Huge  French  Revolutions,  Napoleonisms,  then  Bourbon- 
isms  with  their  corollary  of  Three  Days,  finishing  in  very  unfinal 
Louis-Phillipisms  :  all  this  ought  to  be  didactic  !  All  this  may 
have  taught  us,  that  False  Aristocracies  are  insupportable  ;  that 
No- Aristocracies,  Liberty-aud-Equalities  are  impossible  ;  that 
true  Aristocracies  are  at  once  indispensable  and  not  easily  at- 
tained ! 

Aristocracy  and  Priesthood,  a  Governing  Class  and  a  Teaching 
Class  :  these  two,  sometimes  separate,  and  endeavouring  to  har- 
monize themselves,  sometimes  conjoined  as  one,  and  the  King  a 
Pontiff-King  :  — then  did  no  society  exist  without  these  two  vital 
elements,  then  will  none  exist.  It  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  man  : 
you  will  visit  no  remotest  village  in  the  most  republican  country  of 
the  world,  where,  virtually  or  actually  you  do  not  find  these  two 
powers  at  work.  Man,  little  as  he  may  suppose  it,  is  necessitated 
to  obey  superiors.  He  is  a  social  being  in  virtue  of  this  neces- 
sity ;  nay  he  could  not  be  gregarious  otherwise.  He  obeys  those 
whom  he  esteems  better  than  himself,  wiser,  braver ;  and  will  for- 
ever obey  such,  and  even  be  ready  and  delighted  to  do  it.  The 
Wiser,  Braver  :  these,  a  Virtual  Aristocracy  everywhere  and 
every  when,  do  in  all  societies  that  reach  any  articulate  shape, 
develope  themselves  into  a  ruling  class,  an  Actual  Aristocracy, 
with  settled  modes  of  operating,  what  are  called  laws  and  even 
private-laws  or  privileges,  and  so  forth  ;  very  notable  to  look  upon 
in  this  world.  —  Aristocracy  and  Priesthood,  we  say,  are  some- 
times united.  For  indeed  the  Wiser  and  the  Braver  are  properly 
but  one  class  ;  no  wise  man  but  needed  first  of  all  to  be  a  brave 
man,  or  he  never  had  been  wise.  The  noble  Priest  was  always  a 
noble  Aristos  to  begin  with,  and  something  more  to  end  with. 
Your  Luther,  your  Knox,  your  Anselm,  Becket,  Abbot  Samson, 
Samuel  Johnson,  if  they  had  not  been  brave  enough,  by  what 
21 


242  HOROSCOPE. 

possibility  could  they  ever  have  been  wise  ?  —  If,  from  accident  or 
forethought,  this  your  Actual  Aristocracy  have  got  discriminated 
into  two  classes,  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  the  Priest  class  is  the 
more  dignified  ;  supreme  over  the  other,  as  governing  head  is  over 
active  hand.  And  yet  in  practice  again,  it  is  likeliest  the  reverse 
will  be  found  arranged  ;  —  a  sign  that  the  arrangement  is  already 
vitiated  ;  that  a  split  is  introduced  into  it,  which  will  widen  and 
widen  till  the  whole  be  rent  asunder. 

In  England,  in  Europe  generally,  we  may  say  that  these  two 
Yirtualities  have  unfolded  themselves  into  Actualities,  in  by  far 
the  noblest  and  richest  manner  any  region  of  the  world  ever  saw. 
A  spiritual  Guideship,  a  practical  Governorship,  fruit  of  the  grand 
conscious  endeavours,  say  rather  of  the  immeasurable  unconscious 
instincts  and  necessities  of  men,  have  established  themselves  ;  very 
strange  to  behold.  Everywhere,  while  so  much  has  been  forgot- 
ten, you  find  the  King's  Palace,  and  the  Vice-King's  Castle, 
Mansion,  Manor-house  ;  till  there  is  not  an  inch  of  ground 
from  sea  to  sea  but  has  both  its  King  and  Vice-King,  long  due 
series  of  Vice-Kings,  its  Squire,  Earl,  Duke,  or  whatever  the  title 
of  him,  —  to  whom  you  have  given  the  land  that  he  may  govern 
you  in  it. 

More  touching  still,  there  is  not  a  hamlet  where  poor  peasants 
congregate  but  by  one  means  and  another  a  Church-Apparatus 
has  been  got  together,  —  roofed  edifice  with  revenues  and  belfries  ; 
pulpit,  reading-desk,  with  Books  and  Methods  :  possibility,  in 
short,  and  strict  presciiption,  that  a  man  stand  there  and  speak  of 
spiritual  things  to  men.  It  is  beautiful  ;  — even  in  its  great  obscu- 
ration and  decadence,  it  is  among  the  beautifullest,  most  touching 
objects  one  sees  on  the  earth.  This  speaking  Man  has  indeed,  in 
these  times  wandered  terribly  from  the  point  ;  has,  alas  !  as  it 
were  totally  lost  sight  of  the  point  :  yet,  at  bottom,  whom  have 
we  to  compare  with  him  ?  Of  all  public  functionaries  boarded  and 
lodged  on  the  Industry  of  Modern  Europe,  is  there  one  worthier 
of  the  board  he  has  ?  A  man  even  professing,  and  never  so  lan- 
guidly making  still  some  endeavours,  to  save  the  souls  of  men  :  con- 
trast him  with  a  man  professing  to  do  little  but  shoot  the  partridges 
of  men  !  I  wish  he  could  find  the  point  again,  this  speaking  one  : 
and  stick  to  it  with  tenacity,  with  deadly  energy,  —  for  there  is 


ARISTOCRACIES.  243 

need  of  him  yet !  The  speaking  Function,  this  of  Truth  coming 
to  us  with  a  living  voice,  nay  in  a  living  shape  and  as  a  concrete 
practical  Exemplar  :  this  with  all  our  Writing  and  Printing  Func- 
tions, has  a  perennial  place.  Could  he  but  find  the  point  again,  — 
take  the  old  spectacles  off  his  nose,  and  looking  up  discover,  al- 
most in  contact  with  him,  what  the  real  Satanas,  and  soul-devour- 
ing, world-devouring  Devil,  now  is  !  Original  Sin  and  such  like 
are  bad  enough,  I  doubt  not :  but  distilled  Gin,  dark  Ignorance, 
Stupidity,  dark  Corn-Law,  Bastille  and  Company,  what  are  they  ! 
Will  he  discover  our  new  real  Satan,  whom  he  has  to  fight  ;  or 
go  on  droning  through  his  old  nose-spectacles  about  old  extinct 
Satans,  —  and  never  see  the  real  one,  till  he  feel  him  at  his  own 
throat  and  ours  1  That  is  a  question  for  the  world  !  Let  us  not 
intermeddle  with  it  here. 

Sorrowful,  phantasmal  as  this  same  Double  Aristocracy  of 
Teachers  and  Governors  now  looks,  it  is  worth  all  men's  while 
to  know  that  the  purport  of  it  is  and  remains  noble  and  most 
real.  Dryasdust,  looking  merely  at  the  surface,  is  greatly  in 
error  as  to  those  ancient  Kings.  William  Conqueror,  William 
Rufus  or  Redbeard,  Stephen  Curthose  himself,  much  more  Hen- 
ry Beauclerc  and  our  brave  Plantagenet  Henry  :  the  life  of  these 
men  was  not  a  vulturous  Fighting  ;  it  was  a  valorous  Governing, 
to  which  occasionally  Fighting  did,  and  alas  must  yet,  though 
far  seldomer  now,  superadd  itself  as  an  accident,  a  distressing  im- 
pedimental adjunct.  The  Fighting  too  was  indispensable,  for  as- 
certaining who  had  the  might  over  whom,  —  the  right  over  whom. 
By  much  hard  fighting,  as  we  once  said,  '  the  unrealities,  beaten 
into  dust,  flew  gradually  off,'  and  left  the  plain  reality  and  fact, 
"  thou  stronger  than  I  ;  thou  wiser  than  I  ;  thou  king,  and  sub- 
ject I,"  in  a  somewhat  clearer  condition  ! 

Truly  we  cannot  enough  admire,  in  those  Abbot-Samson  and 
William-Conqueror  times,  the  arrangement  they  had  made  of 
their  Governing  Classes.  Highly  interesting  to  observe  how  the 
sincere  insight,  on  their  part,  into  what  did  of  primary  necessity 
behove  to  be  accomplished,  had  led  them  to  the  way  of  accom- 
plishing it  ;  and  in  the  course  of  time,  to  get  it  accomplished  !• 
No  imaginary  Aristocracy  would  serve  their  turn  ;    and  accord- 


244  HOROSCOPE. 

ingly  they  attained  a  real  one.  The  Bravest  men,  who  it  is  ever 
to  be  repeated  and  remembered,  are  also  on  the  whole  the  Wisest, 
Strongest,  every  way  Best,  had,  here,  with  a  respectable  degree 
of  accuracy,  been  got  selected  ;  seated  each  on  his  piece  of  terri- 
tory, which  was  lent  him,  then  gradually  given  him,  that  he  might 
govern  it.  These  Vice-Kings,  each  on  his  portion  of  the  com- 
mon soil  of  England,  with  a  Head  King  over  all,  were  a  '  Vir- 
tually perfected  into  an  Actuality  '  really  to  an  astonishing  extent. 

For  those  were  rugged  stalwart  ages  ;  full  of  earnestness,  of  a 
rude  GodVtruth  :  —  nay,  at  any  rate,  their  quilting  was  so  un- 
speakably thinner  than  ours  ;  Fact  came  swiftly  on  them,  if  at 
any  time  they  had  yielded  to  Phantasm  !  '  The  Knaves  and  Das- 
tards '  had  to  be  '  arrested '  in  some  measure ;  or  the  world, 
almost  within  year  and  day,  found  that  it  could  not  live.  The 
Knaves  and  Dastards  accordingly  were  got  arrested.  Dastards 
upon  the  very  throne  had  to  be  got  arrested,  and  taken  off  the 
throne,  — by  such  methods  as  then  were  ;  by  the  roughest  me- 
thod, if  there  chance  to  be  no  smoother  one.  Doubtless  there 
was  much  harshness  of  operation,  much  severity  ;  as  indeed  gov- 
ernment and  surgery  are  often  somewhat  severe.  Gurth,~born 
thrall  of  Cedric,  it  is  like,  got  cuffs  as  often  as  pork -parings,  if  he 
misdemeaned  himself  :  but  Gurth  did  belong  to  Cedric  :  no  hu- 
man creature  then  went  about  connected  with  nobody  ;  left  to  go 
his  ways  into  Bastilles  or  worse,  under  Laissez-faire;  reduced 
to  prove  his  relationship  by  dying  of  typhus  fever !  — Days  come 
when  there  is  no  King  in  Israel,  but  every  man  is  his  own  king, 
doing  that  which  is  right  in  his  own  eyes  ;  — and  tar  barrels  are 
burnt  to  '  Liberty,'  Ten  Pound  Franchise  and  the  like,  with  con- 
siderable effect  in  various  ways  !  — 

That  Feudal  Aristocracy,  I  say,  was  no  imaginary  one.  To  a 
"respectable  degree,  its  larls,  what  we  now  call  Earls,  were 
Strong  Ones  in  fact  as  well  as  etymology  ;  its  Dukes  Leaders ; 
its  Lords  Law-ivards.  They  did  all  the  Soldiering  and  Police  of 
the  Country,  all  the  Judging,  Law-making,  even  the  Church- 
Extension  ;  whatsoever  in  the  way  of  Governing,  of  Guiding  and 
Protecting  could  be  done.  It  was  a  Land  Aristocracy  ;  it  man- 
aged the  Governing  of  this  English  People,  and  had  the  reaping 
of  the  soil  of  England  in  return.     It  is,  in,  many  senses,  the  Law 


ARISTOCRACIES.  245 

of  Nature,  this  same  Law  of  Feudalism  ;  —  no  right  Aristocracy 
but  a  Land  one  !  The  curious  are  invited  to  meditate  upon  it  in 
these  days.  Soldiering,  Police  and  Judging,  Church  Extension, 
nay  real  Governance  and  Guidance,  all  this  was  actually  done 
by  the  Holders  of  the  Land  in  return  for  the  Land.  How  much 
of  it  is  now  done  by  them,  —  done  by  anybody  !  Good  Heavens, 
"Laissez-faire,  Do  ye  nothing,  eat  your  wages  and  sleep,"  is 
everywhere  the  passionate  half-wise  cry  of  this  time  ;  and  they 
will  not  so  much  as  do  nothing,  but  must  do  more  Corn-Laws  ! 
We  raise  Fifty-two  millions  from  the  general  mass  of  us,  to  get 
our  Governing  done,  —  or,  alas,  to  get  ourselves  persuaded  that 
it  is  done  :  and  the  '  peculiar  burden  of  the  Land  '  is  to  pay,  not 
all  this,  but  to  pay,  as  I  learn,  one  twenty-fourth  part  of  all  this. 
Our  first  Chartist  Parliament,  or  Oliver  Redivivus,  you  would  say, 
will  know  where  to  lay  the  new  taxes  of  England  !  —  Or,  alas, 
taxes?  Ifwremade  the  Holders  of  the  Land  pay  every  shilling 
still  of  the  expense  of  Governing  the  Land,  what  were  all  that  1 
The  Land  by  mere  hired  Governors,  cannot  be  got  governed. 
You  cannot  hire  men  to  govern  the  Land  ;  it  is  by  a  mission  not 
contracted  for  in  the  Stock-Exchange,  but  felt  in  their  own  hearts 
as  coming  out  of  Heaven,  that  men  can  govern  a  Land.  The 
mission  of  a  Land  Aristocracy  is  a  sacred  one,  in  both  the  senses 
of  that  old  word.  The  footing  it  stands  on,  at  present,  might  give 
rise  to  thoughts,  other  than  of  Corn-Laws  [ 

But  truly  a  '  splendour  of  God,'  as  in  William  Conqueror's 
rough  oath,  did  dwell  in  those  old  rude  veracious  ages ;  did  in- 
form, more  and  more,  with  a  heavenly  nobleness,  all  departments 
of  their  work  and  life.  Phantasms  could  not  yet  walk  abroad  in 
mere  Cloth  Tailorage  ;  they  were  at  least  Phantasms  '  on  the 
rim  of  the  Horizon,'  pencilled  there  by  an  eternal  Light-beam 
from  within.  A  most  '  practical'  Hero-worship  went  on,  uncon- 
sciously or  half-consciously  everywhere.  A  monk  Samson,  with 
a  maximum  of  two  shillings  in  his  pocket,  could,  without  ballot- 
box,  be  made  a  Vice-king  of,  being  seen  to  be  worthy.  The  dif- 
ference between  a  good  man  and  a  bad  man  was  as  yet,  felt  to  be, 
what  it  forever  is,  an  immeasurable  one.  WTho  durst  have  elected 
a  Pandarus  Dogdraught,  Esq.  in  those  days,  to  any  office,  Carlton 
Club,  Senatorship,  or  place  whatsoever"?  It  was  felt  that  the 
21* 


246  HOROSCOPE. 

arch  Satanas  and  no  other  had  a  clear  right  of  property  in  Pan. 
dams  ;  that  it  were  better  for  you  to  have  no  hand  in  Pandarus, 
to  keep  out  of  Pandarus  his  neighbourhood  !  Which  is  to  this 
hour  the  mere  fact ;  though  for  the  present,  alas,  the  forgotten 
fact.  I  think  they  were  comparatively  blessed  times,  those,  in 
their  way!  "Violence,"  "war,"  "disorder:"  well,  what  is 
war,  and  death  itself,  to  such  a  perpetual-life-in-death,  and 
'  peace,  peace  where  there  is  no  peace !  '  Unless  some  Hero- 
worship,  in  its  new  appropriate  form,  can  return,  this  world  does 
not  promise  to  be  very  habitable  long. 

Old  Anselm,  exiled  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  one  of  the 
purest-minded  '  men  of  genius,'  was  travelling  to  make  his  appeal 
to  Rome,  against  King  Rufus,  —  a  man  of  rough  ways,  in  whom 
the  inner  Lightbeam  shone  very  fitfully.  It  is  beautiful  to  read  in 
Monk  Eadmer,  how  the  continental  populations  welcomed  and 
venerated  this  Anselm,  as  no  French  population  now  venerated  a 
Jean-Jacques  or  giant-killing  Voltaire  ;  as  not  even  an  American 
population  now  venerates  a  Schniispel  the  distinguished  Novelist ! 
They  had,  by  phantasy  and  true  insight,  the  intensest  conviction 
that  a  God's-Blessing  dwelt  in  this  Anselm,  —  as  it  is  my  con- 
viction too.  They  crowded  round  with  bent  knees  and  enkindled 
hearts,  to  receive  his  blessing,  to  hear  his  voice,  to  see  the  light 
of  his  face.  My  blessings  on  them  and  on  him  !  —  But  the  nota- 
blest  was  a  certain  necessitous  or  covetous  Duke  of  Burgundy,  in 
straitened  circumstances  we  shall  hope,  —  who  reflected  that  in 
all  likelihood  this  English  Archbishop,  going  towards  Rome  to 
appeal,  must  have  taken  store  of  cash  with  him  to  bribe  the  Car- 
dinals. Wherefore  he  of  Burgundy  for  his  part,  decided  to  lie  in 
wait  and  rob  him.  '  In  an  open  space  of  a  wood  '  some  '  wood  ' 
then  green  and  growing,  eight  centuries  ago,  in  Burgundian  land, 
—  this  fierce  Duke,  with  fierce  steel-followers,  «haggy,  savage, 
as  the  Russian  Bear,  dashes  out  on  the  weak  old  Anselm,  riding 
along  there  on  his  small  quiet-going  pony  ;  escorted  only  by 
Eadmer  and  another  poor  monk  on  ponies ;  and,  except  some 
small  modicum  of  road-money,  not  a  gold  coin  in  his  possession. 
The  steel-clad  Russian  Bear  emerges,  glaring  :  the  old  white- 
bearded  man  starts  not,  —  paces  on  unmoved,  looking  into  it 
with  his  clear  old  earnest  eyes,  with  his  venerable,  sorrowful, 


ARISTOCRACIES.  247 

time-worn  face  ;  of  whom  no  thing-  need  be  afraid,  and  who  also 
is  afraid  of  no  created  thing.  The  fierce  eyes  of  his  Burgundian 
Grace  meet  these  clear  eye-glances,  convey  them  swift  to  his 
heart :  he  bethinks  him  that  probably  this  feeble,  fearless,  hoary 
Figure,  has  in  it  something  of  the  Most  High  God  ;  that  probably 
he  shall  be  damned  if  he  meddle  with  it,  — that,  on  the  whole,  he 
had  better  not.  Pie  plunges,  the  rough  savage,  off  his  warhorse, 
down  to  his  knees  ,  embraces  the  feet  of  old  Anselm  :  he  too 
begs  his  blessing  —  orders  men  to  escort  him  from  being  robbed, 
and  under  dread  penalties  see  him  safe  on  his  way !  Per  os  Dei, 
as  his  majesty  was  wont  to  ejaculate ! 

Neither  is  this  quarrel  of  Rufus  and  Anselm,  of  Henry  and 
Becket,  uninstructive  to  us.  It  was,  at  bottom,  a  great  quarrel. 
For,  admitting  that  Anselm  was  full  of  Divine  Blessing,  he,  by  no 
means,  included  in  him  all  forms  of  Divine  Blessing: — there 
were  far  other  forms  withal,  which  he  little  dreamed  of;  and 
William  Redbeard  was  unconsciously  the  representative  and 
spokesman  of  these  !  In  truth,  could  your  divine  Anselm,  your 
divine  Pope  Gregory  have  had  their  way,  the  results  had  been 
very  notable.  Our  Western  World  had  all  become  a  European 
Thibet,  with  one  Grand  Lama  sitting  at  Rome  ;  our  one  honoura- 
ble business  that  of  singing  mass  all  day  and  all  night.  Which 
would  not  in  the  least  have  suited  us  !  The  Supreme  Powers 
willed  it  not  so. 

It  was  as  if  King  Redbeard  unconsciously,  addressing  Anselm, 
Becket  and  the  others  had  said  :  "  Right  Reverend,  your  theory  of 
the  Universe  is  indisputable  by  man  or  devil,  to  the  core  of  our  heart 
we  feel  that  this  divine  thing  which  you  call  Mother  Church  does 
fill  the  whole  world  hitherto  known,  and  is  and  shall  be  all  our  sal- 
vation and  all  our  desire.  And  yet —  and  yet  —  Behold,  though 
it  is  an  unspoken  secret,  the  world  is  wider  than  any  of  us  think, 
right  Reverend !  Behold,  there  are  yet  other  unmeasurable  sa- 
crednesses  in  this  that  you  call  Heathenism,  Secularity  !  On  the 
whole  I,  in  an  obscure,  but  most  rooted  manner,  feel  that  I  cannot 
comply  with  you.  Western  Thibet  and  perpetual  mass-chaunt- 
ing  —  No.  I  am,  so  to  speak,  in  the  family  way  ;  with  child,  of 
I  know  not  what,  —  certainly  of  something  far  different  from 


248  HOROSCOPE. 

this!  I  have — Per  os  Dei,  I  have  Manchester  Cotton-trades, 
Bromwicham  Iron-trades,  American  Commonwealths,  Indian  Em- 
pires, Steam  Mechanisms  and  Shakspeare  Dramas,  in  my  belly  ; 
and  cannot  do  it,  right  Reverend  !  "  —  So  accordingly  it  was  de- 
cided :  and  Saxon  Becket  spilt  his  life  in  Canterbury  Cathedral, 
as  Scottish  Wallace  did  on  Tower-Hill,  and  as  generally  a  noble 
man  and  martyr  has  to  do,  —  not  for  nothing  ;  no,  but  for  a  di- 
vine something,  other  than  he  had  altogether  calculated.  We  will 
now  quit  this  of  the  hard  organic,  but  limited  Feudal  ages  ;  and 
glance  timidly  into  the  immense  Industrial  Ages,  as  yet  all  inor- 
ganic, and  in  a  quite  pulpy  condition,  requiring  desperately  to  har- 
den themselves  into  some  organism  ! 

Our  Epic  having  now  become  Tools  and  the  Man,  it  is  more 
than  usually  impossible  to  prophesy  the  Future.  The  boundless 
Future  does  lie  there,  predestined,  nay  already  extant  though  un- 
seen ;  hiding,  in  its  continents  of  Darkness  '  Good  hap  and  sor- 
row ;  '  but  the  supremest  intelligence  of  man  cannot  prefigure  much 
of  it :  —  the  united  intelligence  and  effort  of  All  Men  in  all  coming 
generations,  this  alone  will  gradually  prefigure  it,  and  figure  and 
form  it  into  a  seen  fact !  Straining  our  eyes  hitherto,  the  utmost 
effort  of  intelligence  sheds  but  some  most  glimmering  dawn  a  little 
way  into  its  dark  enormous  Deeps  :  only  huge  outlines  loom  un- 
certain on  the  sight ;  and  the  ray  of  prophesy,  at  a  short  distance 
expires.  But  may  we  not  say,  here  as  always,  Sufficient  for  the 
day  is  the  evil  thereof!  To  shape  the  whole  Future  is  not  our 
problem  ;  but  only  to  shape  faithfully  a  small  part  of  it,  according 
to  rules  already  known.  It  is  perhaps  possible  for  each  of  us, 
who  will  with  due  earnestness  inquire,  to  ascertain  clearly  what 
he,  for  his  own  part,  ought  to  do  :  this  let  him,  with  true  heart, 
do,  and  continue  doing.  The  general  issue  will,  as  it  has  always 
done,  rest  well  with  a  Higher  Intelligence  than  ours. 

One  grand  '  outline,'  or  even  two,  many  earnest  readers  may 
perhaps,  at  this  stage  of  the  business,  be  able  to  prefigure  for 
themselves,  — and  draw  some  guidance  from.  One  prediction  or 
even  two  are  already  possible.  For  the  Lifetree  Igdrasil  in  all  its 
new  developements,  is  the  self-same  world-old  Lifetree,  having 
found  an  element  or  elements  there,  running  from  the  very  roots 


ARISTOCRACIES.  249 

of  it,  in  Hela's  Realms,  in  the  Well  of  Miner  and  of  the  Three 
Noimas  or  Times,  up  to  this  present  hour  of  it  in  our  own  hearts, 
we  conclude  that  such  will  have  to  continue.  A  man  has,  in  his 
own  soul,  an  Eternal  ;  can  read  something  of  the  Eternal  there, 
if  he  will  look  !  He  already  knows  wThat  will  continue  ;  what 
cannot,  by  any  means  of  appliance  whatsoever,  be  made  to  con- 
tinue ! 

One  wide  and  widest  '  outline  '  ought  really,  in  all  ways,  to  be 
becoming  clear  to  us  ;  this,  namely  :  That  a  ■  Splendour  of  God,'  in 
one  form  or  other,  will  have  to  unfold  itself  from  the  heart  of 
these  our  Industrial  Ages  too  ;  or  they  will  never  get  themselves 
'organised;'  but  continue  chaotic,  distressed,  distracted,  ever 
more,  and  have  to  perish  in  frantic  suicidal  dissolution.  A  second 
'  outline  '  or  prophecy  narrower,  but  also  wide  enough,  seems  not 
less  certain  :  That  there  will  again  be  a  king  in  Israel  ;  a  system 
of  Order  and  Government ;  and  every  man  shall,  in  some  meas- 
ure, see  himself  constrained  to  do  that  which  is  right  in  the  King's 
eyes  !  This  too  we  may  call  a  sure  element  of  the  Future  ;  for 
this  too  is  of  the  Eternal ;  — this  too  is  of  the  Present,  though 
hidden  from  most ;  and  without  it  no  fibre  of  the  Past  ever  was. 
An  actual  new  Sovereignty,  Industrial  Aristocracy,  is  indispensa- 
ble and  indubitable  for  us. 

But  what  an  Aristocracy  ;  on  what  new,  far  more  complex  and 
cunningly  devised  conditions  than  that  old  Feudal  fighting  one  ! 
For  we  are  to  bethink  us  that  the  Epic  verily  is  not  Arms  and  the 
Man,  but  Tools  and  the  Man,  —  an  infinitely  wider  kind  of  Epic. 
And  again  we  are  to  bethink  us  that  we  cannot  now  be  bound  to 
men.by  brass  collars  —  not  at  all :  that  this  brass-collar  method, 
in  all  figures  of  it,  has  vanished  out  of  Europe  forevermore ! 
Huge  Democracy,  walking  the  streets  everywhere  in  its  Sack 
Coat,  has  asserted  so  much,  irrevocably,  brooking  no  reply  ! 
True  enough,  man  is  forever  the  '  born  thrall '  of  certain  men  born 
master  of  certain  other  men,  born  equal  of  certain  others,  let  him 
acknowledge  the  fact  or  not.  It  is  unblessed  for  him  when  he 
cannot  acknowledge  this  fact ;  he  is  in  the  chaotic  state,  ready  to 
perish,  till  he  do  get  the  fact  acknowledged.  But  no  man  is,  or 
can  henceforth  be,  the  brass-collar  thrall  of  any  man  ;  you  will 
have  to  bind  him  by  other,  far  nobler  and  cunninger  methods. 


250  HOROSCOPE. 

Once  for  all,  he  is  to  be  loose  of  the  brass-collar,  to  have  a  scope 
as  wide  as  his  faculties  now  are  :  —  will  he  not  be  all  the  usefuller 
to  you,  in  that  new  state  ?  Let  him  go  abroad  as  a  trusted  one, 
as  a  free  one  ;  and  return  home  to  you  with  rich  earnings  at  night ! 
Gurth  could  only  tend  pigs  ;  this  one  will  build  cities,  conquer 
waste  worlds.  — How,  in  conjunction  with  inevitable  Democracy, 
indispensable  Sovereignty  is  to  exist :  certainly  it  is  the  hugest 
question  ever  heretofore  propounded  to  mankind  !  The  solution 
of  which  is  work  for  long  years  and  centuries.  Years  and  cen- 
turies of  one  knows  not  what  complexion  ;  — blessed  or  unblessed, 
according  as  they  shall  with  earnest  valiant  effort,  make  progress 
therein,  or  in  slothful  unveracity  and  dilettantism  only  talk  of 
making  progress.  For  either  progress  therein,  or  swift  and  ever 
swifter  progress  towards  dissolution,  is  henceforth  a  necessity. 

It  is  of  importance  that  this  grand  reformation  were  begun  ; 
that  Corn-Law  Debatings  and  other  jargon,  little  less  than  de- 
lirious in  such  a  time,  had  fled  far  away,  and  left  us  room  to  begin  ! 
For  the  evil  has  grown  practical,  extremely  conspicuous  ;  if  it  be 
not  seen  and  provided  for,  the  blindest  fool  will  have  to  feel  it  ere 
long.  There  is  much  that  can  wait ;  but  there  is  something  also 
that  cannot  wait.  With  millions  of  eager  Working  men  impris- 
oned in  '  Impossibility '  and  Poor-Law  Bastilles,  it  is  time  that 
some  means  of  dealing  with  them  were  trying  to  become  '  pos- 
sible '  !  Of  the  Government  of  England,  of  all  articulate-speaking 
functionaries,  real  and  imaginary  Aristocracies,  of  me  and  of  thee, 
it  is  imperatively  demanded,  "  Howt  do  you  mean  to  manage  these 
men  1  Where  are  they  to  find  a  supportable  existence  ?  What  is 
to  become  of  them,  —  and  of  you  !" 


CHAPTER  II. 


BRIBERY    COMMITTEE. 


In  the  case  of  the  late  Bribery  Committee,  it  seemed  to  be  the 
conclusion  of  the  soundest  practical  minds  that  Bribery  could  not 
be  put  down  ;  that  Pure  Election  was  a  thing  we  had  seen  the 
last  of,  and  must  now  go  on  without,  as  we  best  could.  A  con- 
clusion not  a  little  startling  ;  to  which,  it  requires  a  practical  mind 
of  some  seasoning  to  reconcile  yourself  at  once  !  It  seems,  then, 
we  are  henceforth  to  get  ourselves  constituted  Legislators  not 
according  to  what  merit  we  may  have,  or  even  what  merit  we 
may  seem  to  have,  but  according  to  the  length  of  our  purse,  and 
our  frankness,  impudence  and  dexterity  in  laying  out  the  contents 
of  the  same.  Our  theory  written  down  in  all  books  and  law-books, 
spouted  forth  from  all  barrel-heads,  is  perfect  purity  of  ten-pound 
franchise,  absolute  sincerity  of  question  put  and  answer  given  ;  — 
and  our  practice  is  irremediable  bribery  ;  irremediable,  unpunish- 
able, which  you  will  do  more  harm  than  good  by  attempting  to 
punish  !  Once  more,  a  very  startling  conclusion  indeed  ;  which, 
whatever  the  soundest  practical  minds  in  Parliament  may  think 
of  it,  invites  all  British  men  to  meditations  of  various  kinds. 

A  Parliament,  one  would  say,  which  proclaims  itself  elected 
and  eligible  by  bribery,  tells  the  Nation  that  is  governed  by  it  a 
piece  of  very  singular  news.  Bribery  :  have  we  reflected  what 
bribery  is?  Bribery  means  not  only  length  of  purse,  which  is 
neither  qualification  nor  the  contrary  for  legislating  well ;  but  it 
means  dishonesty,  and  even  impudent  dishonesty ;  —  brazen  in- 
sensibility to  lying  and  to  making  others  lie  ;  total  oblivion,  and 
flinging  overboard  for  the  nonce,  of  any  real  thing  you  can  call 
veracity,  morality  ;  with  dextrous  putting  on  the  cast-clothes  of 
that  real  thing,  and  strutting  about  in  them  !  What  Legislating 


252  HOROSCOPE. 

can  you  get  out  of  a  man  in  that  fatal  situation  ?  None  that  will 
profit  much,  one  would  think  !  A  Legislator  who  has  left  his 
veracity  lying  on  the  door- threshold,  he,  why  surely  he —  ought 
to  be  sent  out  to  seek  it  again  ! 

Heavens,  what  an  improvement,  were  there  once  fairly,  in 
Downing-Street,  an  Election-Office  opened,  with  a  Tariff  of 
Boroughs  !  Such  and  such  a  population,  amount  of  property- 
tax,  ground-rental,  extent-of-trade  ;  returns  two  Members,  returns 
one  Member,  for  so  much  money  down  :  Ipswich  so  many  thou- 
sands, Nottingham  so  many,  -*■  as  they  happened,  one  by  one,  to 
fall  into  this  new  Downing-Street  Schedule  A  !  An  incalculable 
improvement,  in  comparison  :  for  now  at  least  you  have  it  fairly 
by  length  of  purse,  and  leave  the  dishonesty,  the  impudence,  the 
unveracity  all  handsomely  aside.  Length  of  purse  and  desire  to 
be  a  Legislator  ought  to  get  a  man  into  Parliament,  not  with]  but 
if  possible  without  the  unveracity,  the  impudence  and  the  dishon- 
esty !  Length  of  purse  and  desire,  these  are,  as  intrinsic  qualifi- 
cations, correctly  equal  to  zero  ;  but  they  are  not  yet  less  than 
zero,  as  the  smallest  addition  of  that  latter  sort  will  make  them  ! 

And  is  it  come  to  this  ?  And  does  our  venerable  Parliament 
announce  itself  elected  and  eligible  in  this  manner?  Surely  such 
a  parliament  promulgates  strange  horoscopes  of  itself.  What  is 
to  become  of  a  Parliament  elected  or  eligible  in  this  manner  ? 
Unless  Belial  and  Beelzebub  have  got  possession  of  the  throne  of 
this  Universe,  such  Parliament  is  preparing  itself  for  new  reform- 
bills'.  We  shall  have  to  try  it  by  Chartism,  or  any  conceivable- 
ism,  rather  than  put  up  with  this  !  There  is  already  in  England 
'  religion  '  enough  to  get  six-hundred  and  fifty-eight  Consulting 
Men  brought  together  who  do  not  begin  with  a  lie  in  their  mouth. 
Our  poor  old  Parliament,  thousands  of  years  old,  is  still  good  for 
something,  for  several  things  :  —  though  many  are  beginning  to 
ask,  with  ominous  anxiety,  in  these  days  :  '  For  what  thing  ? ' 
But  for  whatever  thing  and  things  Parliament  be  good,  indisputa- 
bly it  must  start  with  other  than  a  lie  in  its  mouth  !  On  the 
whole,  a  Parliament  working  with  a  lie  in  its  mouth,  will  have  to 
take  itself  away.  To  no  Parliament  or  thing  that  one  has  heard 
of,  did  this  Universe  ever  long  yield  harbour  on  that  footing.  At 
all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  some  Chartism  is  advancing,  some 


BRIBERY    COMMITTEE.  253 

armed  Cromwell  is  advancing-,  to  apprise  such  Parliament :    "Ye 
are  no  Parliament.     In  the  name  of  God,  —  go  !  " 

In  sad  truth j  once  more,  how  is  our  whole  existence,  in  these 
present  days,  built  on  Cant,  Speciosity,  False-hood,  Dilettant- 
ism ;  with  this  one  serious  veracity  in  it :  Mammonism  !  Dig 
down  where  you  will,  through  the  Parliament  floor  or  elsewhere, 
how  infallibly  do  you  at  spade's  depth  below  the  surface,  come 
upon  this  universal  Zzar's-rock  Substratum?  Much  else  is  orna- 
mental ;  true  on  barrel-heads,  in  pulpits,  hustings,  Parliamentary 
benches  ;  but  this  is  forever  true  and  truest  :  "  money  does  bring 
money's  worth  ;  Put  money  in  your  purse."  Here  if  nowhere 
else,  is  the  human  soul  still  in  thorough  earnest ;  sincere  with  a 
prophet's  sincerity  :  and  '  the  Hell  of  the  English,'  as  Sauerteig 
said,  ■  is  the  infinite  terror  of  Not  getting  on,  especially  of  not 
making  money.'     With  results  ! 

To  many  persons  the  horoscope  of  Parliament  is  more  interest- 
ing than  to  me  :  but  surely  all  men  with  souls  must  admit  that 
sending  members  to  Parliament  by  bribery  is  an  infamous  sole- 
cism ;  an  act  entirely  immoral,  which  no  man  can  have  to  do  with, 
more  or  less,  but  he  will  soil  his  fingers  more  or  less.  No  Carl- 
ton Clubs,  Reform  Clubs,  nor  any  sort  of  clubs  or  creatures,  or  of 
accredited  opinions  or  practices,  can  make  a  Lie  Truth,  can  make 
Bribery  a  Propriety.  The  Parliament  should  really  either  punish 
and  put  away  Bribery,  or  legalize  it  by  some  office  in  Downing- 
ing-Streef?  As  I  read  the  Apocalypses,  a  Parliament  that  can 
do  neither  of  these  things  is  not  in  a  good  way.  —  And  yet,  alas, 
what  of  Parliaments  and  their  Elections  1  Parliamentary  Elec- 
tions are  but  the  topmost  ultimate  outcome  of  an  electioneering 
which  goes  on  at  all  hours  in  all  places,  in  every  meeting  of  two 
or  more  men.  It  is  we  that  vote  wrong,  and  teach  the  poor  rag- 
ged Freemen  of  Boroughs  to  vote  wrong.  We  pay  respect  to 
those  worthy  of  no  respect. 

Is  not  Pandarus  Dogdraught  a  member  of  select  clubs,  and  ad- 
mitted into  the  drawingrooms  of  men  ?  Visibly  to  all  persons  he 
is  of  the  offal  of  Creation  ;  but  he  carries  money  in  his  purse,  due 
lacker  on  his  dog-visage,  and  it  is  believed  will  not  steal  spoons. 
The  human  species  does  not  with  one  voice,  like  the  Hebrew 
22 


254  HOROSCOPE. 

Psalmist,  '  shun  to  sit '  with  Dogdraught,  refuse  totally  to  dine 
with  Dogdraught  ;  men  called  of  honour  are  willing  enough  to 
dine  with  him,  his  talk  being  lively  —  and  his  champagne  excel- 
lent. We  say  to  ourselves,  "  The  man  is  in  good  society,"  — 
others  have  already  voted  for  him  ;  why  should  not  1 ?  We  for- 
get the  indefeasible  right  of  property  that  Satan  has  in  Dog- 
draught,—  we  are  not  afraid  to  be  near  Dogdraught !  It  is  we 
that  vote  wrong,  blindly,  nay  with  falsity  prepense  !  It  is  we 
that  no  longer  know  the  difference  between  human  Worth  and 
human  Unworth  ;  or  feel  that  the  one  is  admirable,  and  alone  ad- 
mirable, the  other  detestable,  damnable  !  How  shall  we  find  out 
a  Hero  and  Vice-king  Samson  with  a  maximum  of  two  shillings 
in  his  pocket  ?  We  have  no  chance  to  do  such  a  thing.  We  have 
got  out  of  the  Ages  of  Heroism,  deep  into  the  Ages  of  Flunkey- 
ism, —  and  must  return  or  die.  What  a  noble  set  of  mortals  are 
we,  who,  because  there  is  no  Saint  Edmund  threatening  us  at  the 
rim  of  the  horizon,  are  not  afraid  to  be  whatever,  for  the  day  and 
hour,  is  smoothest  for  us ! 

And  now,  in  good  sooth,  why  should  an  indigent  discerning 
Freeman  give  his  vote  without  bribes  ?  Let  us  rather  honour  the 
poor  man  that  he  does  discern  clearly  wherein  lies  for  him  the 
true  kernel  of  the  matter.  What  is  it  to  the  ragged  grimy  Free- 
man of  a  Tenpound  Franchise  Borough  whether  Aristides  Rigma- 
role Esquire,  of  the  Destructive,  or  the  Hon.  Alcides  Dolittle  of 
the  Conservative  Party  be  sent  to  Parliament ;  —  much  more, 
whether  the  two  thousandth  part  of  them  be  sent,  for  that  is  the 
amount  of  his  faculty  in  it?  Destructive  or  Conservative,  what 
will  either  of  thein  destroy  or  conserve  of  vital  moment  to  this 
Freeman?  Has  he  found  either  of  them  care,  at  bottom,  a  six- 
pence for  him  or  his  interests,  or  those  of  his  class,  or  of  his  cause, 
or  of  any  class  or  cause,  that  is  of  much  value  to  God  or  to  man  1 
Rigmarole  and  Dolittle  Lave  alike  cared  for  themselves  hitherto, 
and  for  their  own  clique,  and  self-conceited  crotchets,  —  their 
greasy  dishonest  interests  of  pudding,  or  windy  dishonest  interests 
of  praise  ;  and  not  very  perceptibly  for  any  other  interest  what- 
ever. Neither  Rigmarole  nor  Dolittle  will  accomplish  any  good 
or  any  evil  for  this  grimy  Freeman,  like  giving  him  a  five-pound 
note,  or  refusing  to  give  it  him.     It  will  be  smoothest  to  vote  ac- 


BRIBERY    COMMITTEE.  255 

cording  to  value  received.    That  is  the  veritable  fact,  and  the  indi- 
gent, like  others  that  are  not  indigent,  acts  conformably. 

Why  reader,  truly  if  they  asked  thee  or  me  '  which  way  we 
meant  to  vote?' — were  it  not  our  likeliest  answer  :  "Neither 
way  !  "  I,  as  a  Tenpound  Franchiser,  will  receive  no  bribe;  but 
also  I  will  not  vote  for  either  of  these  men.  Neither  Rigmarole 
nor  Dolittle  shall,  by  furtherance  of  mine,  go  and  make  laws  for 
this  country.  I  will  have  no  hand  in  such  a  mission.  How  dare 
I !  If  other  men  cannot  be  got  in  England,  a  totally  other  sort  of 
men,  different  as  light  is  from  dark,  as  star-fire  is  from  street-mud, 
what  is  the  use  of  votings  or  of  Parliaments  in  England  1  England 
ought  to  resign  herself;  there  is  no  hope  or  possibility  for  Eng- 
land. If  England  cannot  get  her  Knaves  and  Dastards  '  arrested  ' 
in  some  degree,  but  only  get  them  '  elected,'  what  is  to  become 
of  England  ? 

I  conclude  with  all  confidence  that  England  will  verily  have  to 
put  an  end  to  briberies,  on  her  Election  Hustings  and  elsewhere, 
at  what  cost  soever  ;  —  and  likewise  that  we,  Electors  and  Eligi- 
bles,  one  and  all  of  us,  for  our  own  behoof  and  hers,  cannot  too  soon 
begin,  at  what  cost  soever,  to  put  an  end  to  bribeabilitics  in  our- 
selves. The  death-leprosy,  attacked  in  this  manner,  by  purify- 
ing lotions  from  without,  and  by  rallying  of  the  vital  energies  and 
purities  from  within,  will  probably  abate  somewhat !  It  has  other- 
wise no  chance  to  abate. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION. 


What  our  Government  can  do  in  this  grand  Problem  of  the 
Working  Classes  of  England  1  Yes,  supposing  the  insane  Corn- 
Laws  totally  abolished,  all  speech  of  them  ended,  and  '  from  ten 
to  twenty  years  of  new  possibility  to  live  and  find  wages '  conceded 
us  in  consequence  :  what  the  English  Government  might  be  ex- 
pected to  accomplish  or  attempt  towards  rendering  the  existence 
of  our  labouring  millions  somewhat  less  anomalous,  somewhat 
less  impossible,  in  the  years  that  are  to  follow  those  '  ten  or 
twenty,'  if  either  '  ten  '  or  '  twenty  '  there  be  ? 

It  is  the  most  momentous  question.  For  all  this  of  the  Corn- 
Law  abrogation,  and  what  can  follow  therefrom,  is  but  as  the 
shadow  on  King  Hezekiah's  Dial  :  the  shadow  has  gone  back 
twenty  years  ;  but  will  again,  in  spite  of  Free-Trades  and  Abro- 
gations, travel  forward  its  old  fated  way.  With  our  present  sys- 
tem of  individual  Mammonism  and  Government  by  Laissez-faire, 
this  Nation  cannot  live.  And  if  in  the  priceless  interim,  some  new 
life  and  healing  be  not  found,  there  is  no  second  respite  to  be 
counted  on.  The  shadow  on  the  Dial  advances  thenceforth 
without  pausing.  What  can  Government  do  1  This  that  they 
call  '  organising  of  Labour  '  is,  if  well  understood,  the  Problem 
of  the  whole  Future,  for  all' who  will  in  future  pretend  to  govern 
men.  But  our  first  preliminary  stage  of  it,  How  to  deal  with  the 
actual  Labouring  Millions  of  England  1  this  is  the  imperatively 
pressing  Problem  of  the  Present,  pressing  with  a  truly  fearful  in- 
tensity and  imminence  in  these  very  years  and  days.  No  Govern- 
ment can  longer  neglect  it :  once  more,  what  can  our  Government 
do  in  it  ? 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  257 

Governments  are  of  very  various  degrees  of  activity  :  some  al- 
together lazy  Governments,  in  '  free  countries  '  as  they  are  called, 
seem  in  these  times  almost  to  profess  to  do,  if  not  nothing,  one 
knows  not  at  first  what.  To  debate  in  Parliament,  and  gain  ma- 
jorities ;  and  ascertain  who  shall  be,  with  a  toil  hardly  second  to 
Ixion's,  the  Prime  speaker  and  spoke-holder,  and  keep  the  Ixion's 
wheel  going,  if  not  forward,  yet  round?  Not  altogether  so  :  — 
much,  to  the  experienced  eye,  is  not  what  it  seems  !  Chancery 
and  certain  other  Law-Courts  seem  nothing  ;  yet  in  fact,  they 
are,  the  worst  of  them,  something  :  chimnies  for  the  devilry  and 
contention  of  men  to  escape  by  ;  —  a  very  considerable  something  ! 
Parliament  too  has  its  tasks,  if  thou  will  look  ;  fit  to  wear  out  the 
lives  of  toughest  men.  The  celebrated  Kilkenny  Cats,  through 
their  tumultuous  congress,  cleaving  the  ear  of  Night,  could  they 
be  said  to  do  nothing?  Hadst  thou  been  of  them,  thou  hadst 
seen !  The  feline  beast  laboured,  as  with  steam  up  —  to  the  burst 
ing  point ;  and  death-doing  energy  nerved  every  muscle  :  they 
had  a  work  then  ;  and  did  it !  On  the  morrow,  two  tails  were 
found  left,  and  peaceable  annihilation  :  the  neighbourhood  deliver- 
ed from  despair. 

Again,  are  not  Spinning  Dervishes  an  eloquent  emblem,  signi- 
ficant of  much?  Hast  thou  noticed  him,  that  solemn-visaged 
Turk,  the  eyes  shut ;  dingy  wool  mantle  circularly  hiding  his 
figure  ;  — bell-shaped  ;  like  a  dingy  bell  set  spinning  on  the  tongue 
of  it?  By  centrifugal  force  the  dingy  wool  mantle  heaves  itself; 
spreads  more  and  more,  like  upturned  cup  widening  into  upturned 
saucer :  thus  spins  he,  to  the  praise  of  Allah  and  advantage  of 
his  country,  fast  and  faster,  till  collapse  ensue,  and  sometimes 
death  !  — 

A  Government  such  as  ours,  consisting  of  from  seven  to  eight 
hundred  Parliamentary  Talkers,  with  their  escort  of  able  Editors 
and  Public  Opinion  ;  and  for  head,  certain  Lords  and  servants  of 
the  Treasury,  and  Chief  Secretaries  and  others,  who  find  them 
selves  at  once  Chiefs  and  No-Chiefs,  and  often  commanded  rather 
than  commanding,  —  is  doubtless  a  most  complicate  entity  and 
none  of  the  alertest  for  getting  on  with  business  !  Clearly  enough, 
if  the  Chiefs  be  not  self-motive  and  what  we  call  men,  but  mere 
patient  lay-figures  without  self-motive  principle,  the  Government 
22* 


258  HOROSCOPE. 

will  not  move  any  whither ;  it  will  tumble  disastrously,  and 
jumble,  round  its  own  axis,  as  for  many  years  past  we  have  seen 
it  do.  —  And  yet  a  self-motive  man  who  is  not  a  lay-figure,  place 
him  in  the  heart  of  what  entity  you  may,  will  make  it  move  more 
or  less !  The  absurdest  in  Nature  he  will  make  a  little  less  ab- 
surd ;  he.  The  unwieldliest  he  will  make  to  move  ;  — that  is  the 
use  of  his  existing  then.  He  will  at  least  have  the  manfulness 
to  depart  out  of  it,  if  not ;  to  say,  "  I  cannot  move  in  thee,  and 
be  a  man  ;  like  a  wretched  drift-log  dressed  in  man's  clothes  and 
minister's  clothes,  doomed  to  a  lot  baser  than  belongs  to  man,  I 
will  not  continue  with  thee,  tumbling  aimless  on  the  Mother  of 
Dead  Dogs  here  :  — adieu  !  " 

For  on  the  whole  it  is  the  lot  of  Chiefs  everywhere,  this  same. 
No  Chief  in  the  most  despotic  country  but  was  a  servant  withal ; 
at  once  an  absolute  commanding  General,  and  a  poor  Orderly- 
Serjeant,  ordered  by  the  very  men  in  the  ranks,  —  obliged  to  col- 
lect the  vote  of  the  ranks  too,  in  some  articulate  or  inarticulate 
shape,  and  weigh  well  the  same.  The  proper  name  of  all  kings 
is  minister,  Servant.  In  no  conceivable  Government  can  a  lay- 
figure  get  forward  !  This  Worker,  surely  he  above  all  others, 
has  to  spread  out  his  Gideon  Fleece,  and  collect  the  monitions  of 
Immensity;  the  poor  Localities,  as  we  said,  and  Parishes  of 
Palace-yard  or  elsewhere,  having  no  due  monition  in  them.  A 
Prime  Minister  even  here  in  England,  who  shall  dare  believe  the 
heavenly  omens,  and  address  himself  like  a  man  and  hero  to  the 
great  dumb-struggling  heart  of  England  :  and  speak  out  foi  it, 
and  act  out  for  it.  the  God's-Justice  it  is  writhing  to  get  uttered, 
and  perishing  for  want  of,  —  yes,  he  too  will  see  awaken  round 
him,  in  passionate  burning  all  defiant  loyalty,  the  heart  of  Eng- 
land, and  such  a  '  support '  as  no  Division-List  or  Parliamentary 
Majority  was  ever  yet  known  to  yield  a  man  !  Here  as  there, 
now  as  then,  he  who  can  and  dare  trust  the  Heavenly  Immen- 
sities, all  earthly  Localities  are  subject  to  him.  We  will  pray 
for  such  a  man  and  First-Lord; — yes,  and  far  better,  we  will 
strive  and  incessantly  make  ready,  each  of  us,  to  be  worthy  to 
serve  and  second  such  a  First-Lord  !  We  shall  then  be  as  good 
as  sure  of  his  arriving  ;  —  sure  of  many  things,  let  him  arrive  or 
not. 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  259 

Who  can  despair  of  Governments  that  passes  a  soldier's  guard- 
house, meets  a  red-coated  man  on  the  streets  !  That  a  body  of 
men  could  be  got  together  to  kill  other  men  when  you  bade  them  : 
this,  a  priori,  does  it  not  seem  one  of  the  impossiblest  things'? 
Yet  look,  behold  it :  in  the  stolidest  of  Donothing  Governments 
that  impossibility  is  a  thins-  done.  See  it  there,  with  buff  belts, 
red  coats  on  its  back  ;  walking  sentry  at  guard-houses,  brushing 
white  breeches  in  barracks  ;  an  indisputable  palpable  fact.  Out 
of  grey  Antiquity,  amid  all  finance  difficulties,  Scaccarium  Tal- 
lies, ship-monies,  coat-and-conduct  monies,  and  vicissitudes  of 
chance  and  time,  there  down  to  the  present  blessed  hour  it  is. 

Often  in  these  painfully  decadent  and  nascent  Times,  with  their 
distresses,  inarticulate  gaspings  and  '  impossibilities  ;  '  meeting  a 
tall  Life  Guardsman  in  his  snow-white  trowsers,  or  seeing  those 
two  statuesque  Life  Guardsmen  in  their  frowning  bearskins,  pipe- 
clayed buckskins,  on  their  coal-black,  sleek,  fiery  quadrupeds,  riding 
sentry  at  the  Horse  Guards,  —  it  strikes  one  with  a  kind  of  mourn- 
ful interest,  how,  in  such  universal  down-rushing  and  wrecked 
impotence  of  almost  all  old  institutions,  this  oldest  Fighting  Insti- 
tution is  still  so  young.  Fresh  complexioned,  firm-limbed,  six 
Teet  by  the  standard,  this  fighting  man  has  verily  been  got  up, 
and  can  fight.  While  so  much  has  not  yet  got  into  being  ;  while 
so  much  has  gone  gradually  out  of  it  and  become  an  empty  sem- 
blance or  clothes-suit ;  and  highest  Kings'-cloaks,  mere  chimeras 
parading  under  them  so  long,  are  getting  unsightly  to  the  earnest 
eye,  unsightly,  almost  offensive,  like  a  costlier  kind  of  scare-crow's 
blanket,  —  here  still  is  a  realty  ! 

The  man  in  horsehair  wig  advances,  promising  that  he  will  get 
me  'justice:  '  he  takes  me  into  Chancery-Law-Courts,  into  de- 
cades, half  centuries  of  hubbub,  of  distracted  jargon  ;  and  does 
get  me  disappointment,  almost  desperation  ;  and  one  refuge  :  that 
of  dismissing  him  and  his  '  justice  '  altogether  out  of  my  head. 
For  I  have  work  to  do  ;  I  cannot  spend  my  decades  in  mere  argu- 
ing with  other  men  about  the  exact  wages  of  my  work  :  I  will 
work  cheerfully  with  no  wages,  sooner  than  with  a  ten-years' 
gangrene  or  Chancery  Law-suit  in  my  heart !  He  of  the  horse- 
hair wig  is  a  sort  of  failure  ;  no  substance,  but  a  fond  imagination 
of  the  mind.     He  of  the  shovel-hat,  again,  who  comes  forward 


260  HOROSCOPE. 

professing  that  he  will  save  my  soul,  —  O  ye  Eternities,  of  him, 
in  this  place  be  absolute  silence  !  —  But  he  of  the  red  coat,  I  say 
is  a  success  and  no  failure  !  He  will  veritably,  if  he  get  orders, 
draw  out  a  long  sword  and  kill  me.  No  mistake  there.  He  is  a 
fact  and  not  a  shadow.  Alive  in  this  year,  Forty-three,  able  and 
willing  to  do  his  work.  In  dim  old  centuries,  with  William  Rufus, 
William  of  Ipres,  or  far  earlier,  he  began  ;  and  has  come  down 
safe  so  far.  Catapult  has  given  place  to  cannon,  pike  has  given 
place  to  musket,  iron  mail-shirt  to  coat  of  red  cloth,  saltpetre 
rope-match  to  percussion  cap  ;  equipments,  circumstances  have 
all  changed,  and  again  changed  :  but  the  human  battle-engine,  in 
the  inside  of  any  or  each  of  these,  ready  still  to  do  battle,  stands 
there,  six  feet  in  standard  size.  There  are  Pay  Offices,  Woolwich 
Arsenals  ;  there  is  a  Horse-Guards,  War-Office,  Captain-General ; 
persuasive  Serjeants,  with  tap  of  drum,  recruit  in  market  towns 
and  villages  ;  —  and,  on  the  whole,  I  say,  here  is  your  actual 
drilled  fighting-man  ;  here  are  your  actual  Ninety-thousand  of 
such  ;  ready  to  go  into  any  quarter  of  the  world  and  fight ! 

Strange,  interesting,  and  yet  most  mournful  to  reflect  on. 
Was  this,  then,  of  all  the  things  mankind  had  some  talent  for,  the 
one  thing  important  to  learn  well,  and  bring  to  perfection  :  this  of 
successfully  killing  one  another  ?  Truly  you  have  learned  it  well, 
and  carried  the  business  to  a  high  perfection.  It  is  incalculable 
what,  by  arranging,  commanding,  and  regimenting,  you  can  make 
of  men.  Three  thousand  straight-standing  firm-set  individuals, 
who  shoulder  arms,  who  march,  wheel,  advance,  retreat,  and 
are,  for  your  behoof,  a  magazine  charged  with  fiery  death,  in  the 
most  perfect  condition  of  potential  activity  ;  few  months  ago  till 
the  persuasive  sergeant  came,  what  were  they  1  Multiform  ragged 
losels,  runaway  apprentices,  starved  weavers,  thievish  valets  ;  an 
entirely  broken  population,  —  fast  tending  towards  the  treadmill. 
But  the  persuasive  serjeant  came  ;  by  tap  of  drum  enlisted,  or 
found  lists  of  them,  took  heartily  to  drilling  them  ;  — and  he  and 
you  have  made  them  this  !  Most  potent,  effectual  for  all  work 
whatsoever,  is  wise  planning,  firm  combining  and  commanding 
among  men.  Let  no  man  despair  of  Governments  who  looks  on 
these  two  sentries  at  the  Horse-Guards,  and  our  United-Service 
Clubs  !     I  could  conceive  an  Emigration  Service,  a  Teaching  Ser- 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  261 

vice,  considerable  varieties  of  United  and  Separate  Services,  of 
the  due  thousands  strong,  all  effective  as  this  Fighting  Service 
is  ;  all  doing  their  work,  like  it ;  — which  work,  much  more  than 
Fighting,  is  henceforth  the  necessity  of  these  New  Ages  we  are 
got  into  !  Much  lies  among  us,  convulsively,  nigh  desperately 
struggling  to  be  born. 

But  mean  Governments,  as  mean-limited  individuals  do,  have 
stood  by  the  physically  indispensable  ;  have  realized  that  and 
nothing  more.  The  soldier  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  difficult 
things  to  realize  ;  but  Governments  had  they  not  realized  him, 
could  not  have  existed  :  accordingly  he  is  heie.  O  Heavens,  if 
we  saw  an  army  ninety  thousand  strong,  maintained  and  fully 
equipt,  in  continual  real  action  and  battle  against  Human  Starva- 
tion, against  Chaos,  Necessity,  Stupidity,  and  our  real  'natural 
enemies,'  what  a  business  were  it !  Fighting  and  molesting  not 
'  the  French,'  who,  poor  men,  have  a  hard  enough  battle  of  their 
own  in  the  like  kind,  and  need  no  additional  molesting  from  us,  — 
but  fighting  and  incessantly  spearing  down  and  destroying  False- 
hood, Nescience,  Delusion,  Disorder,  and  the  Devil  and  his 
Angels !  Thou  thyself,  cultivated  reader,  hast  done  something 
in  that  alone  true  warfare ;  but,  alas,  under  what  circumstances 
was  it?  Thee  no  beneficent  drill-sergeant,  with  any  effectiveness, 
would  rank  in  line  beside  thy  fellows ;  train,  like  a  true  didactic 
artist,  by  the  wit  of  all  past  experience  to  do  thy  soldiering  ;  en- 
courage thee  when  right,  punish  thee  when  wrong,  and  every- 
where with  wise  word-of-command  say,  Forward  on  this  hand, 
Forward  on  that !  Ah,  no  :  thou  hadst  to  learn  .thy  small-sword 
and  platoon  exercise  where  and  how  thou  couldst ;  to  all  mortals 
but  thyself  it  was  indifferent  whether  thou  shouldst  ever  learn  it. 
And  the  rations,  and  shilling  a-day,  were  they  provided  thee,  — 
reduced  as  I  have  known  brave  Jean-Pauls,  learning  their  exer- 
cise, to  live  on  'water  wifliout  the  bread?'  The  rations;  or 
any  furtherance  of  promotion  to  Corporalship,  Lance-Corporal- 
ship,  or  due  cat-o '-nine-tails,  with  the  slightest  reference  to  thy 
deserts,  were  not  provided.  Forethought  even  as  of  a  pipe- 
clayed drill-serjeant,  did  not  preside  over  thee.  To  Corporalship, 
Lance-Corporalship,  thou  didst  attain  ;  alas,  also  to  the  halberts 
and  cat .  but  thy  rewarder  and  punisher  seemed  blind  as  the 


262  HOROSCOPE. 

Deluge  :    neither  lance-corporalship,  nor    even  drummer's    cat, 
because  both  appeared  delirious,  brought  thee  due  profit ! 

It  was  well,  all  this,  we  know  ;  —  and  yet  it  was  not  well  ! 
Forty  soldiers,  I  am  told,  will  disperse  the  largest  Spitalfields 
mob  :  forty  to  ten  thousand,  that  is  the  proportion  between  drilled 
and  undrilled.  Much  there  is  which  cannot  yet  be  organized  in 
this  world;  but  somewhat  also  which  can,  somewhat  also  which 
must.  When  one  thinks,  for  example,  what  Books  are  become 
and  becoming  for  us,  what  Operative  Lancashires  are  become  ; 
what  a  Fourth  Estate  and  innumerable  Virtualities  not  yet  got  to 
be  Actualities  are  become  and  becoming,  —  one  sees  organisms 
enough  in  the  dim  huge  Future  ;  and  '  united  services  '  quite 
other  than  the  red  coat  one;  and  much,  even  in  these  years, 
struggling  to  be  born. 

Of  Time-Bill,  Factory-Bill  and  other  such  Bills  the  present 
Editor  has  no  authority  to  speak.  He  knows  not  (it  is  for  other 
than  he  to  know)  in  what  specific  ways  it  may  be  feasible  to  inter- 
fere, with  Legislation,  between  the  Workers  and  the  Master 
Workers  ;  —  knows  only  and  sees,  what  all  men  are  beginning  to 
see,  that  Legislative  interference,  and  interferences  not  a  few  are 
indispensable  ;  that  as  a  lawless  anarchy  of  supply-and-demand, 
on  market  wages  alone,  this  province  of  things  cannot  longer  be 
left.  Nay,  interference  has  begun  :  there  are  already  Factory 
Inspectors,  who  seem  to  have  no  lack  of  work.  Perhaps  there 
might  be  Mine-Inspectors  too  :  —  might  there  not  be  Furrow- 
field  Inspectors  withal,  and  ascertain  for  us  howT  on  seven  and  six- 
pence a  week  a  human  family  does  live  !  Interference  has  begun, 
must  continue,  must  extensively  enlarge  itself,  deepen  and  sharpen 
itself.  Such  things  cannot  longer  be  idly  lapped  in  darkness,  and 
suffered  to  go  on  unseen  :  the  Heavens  do  see  them  ;  the  curse, 
not  the  blessing  of  the  Heavens  is  on  an  Earth  that  refuses  to  see 
them. 

Again,  are  not  Sanitary  Regulations  possible  for  a  Legislature? 
The  old  Romans  had  their  ^Ediles,  who  would,  I  think,  in  direct 
contravention  to  supply-and-demand,  have  rigorously  seen  rammed 
up  into  total  Abolition  many  a  foul  cellar  in  our  Southwarks, 
Saint-Gileses,  and  dark  poison-lanes  ;  saying  sternly  "  Shall  a 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  263 

Roman  Man  dwell  there?  "  The  Legislature  at  whatever  cost  of 
consequences,  would  have  had  to  answer,  "  God  forbid  !  '!  — The 
Legislature,  even  as  it  now  is,  could  order  all  dingy  Manufacturing 
Towns  to  cease  from  their  soot  and  darkness,  to  let  in  the  blessed 
sunlight,  the  blue  of  Heaven,  and  become  clear  and  clean  ;  to  burn 
their  coal  smoke  namely,  and  make  flame  of  it.  Baths,  free  air,  a 
wholesome  temperature,  ceilings  twenty  feet  high,  might  be  or- 
dained by  Act  of  Parliament,  in  all  Establishments  licensed  as 
Mills.  There  are  such  Mills  already  extant; — honour  to  the 
builders  of  them  !  The  Legislature  can  say  to  others ;  Go  ye  and 
do  likewise  ;  better  if  you  can. 

Every  toiling  Manchester,  its  smoke  and  soot  all  burnt,  ought 
it  not  among  so  many  world-wide  conquests,  to  have  a  hundred 
acres  or  so  of  free  greenfield  with  trees  on  it,  conquered  for  its 
little  children  to  disport  in  ;  for  its  all-conquering  workers  to  take 
a  breath  of  twilight  air  in  1  You  would  say  so  ?  A  willing  Leg- 
islature could  say  so  with  effect.  A  willing  Legislature  could 
say  very  many  things  !  And  to  whatsoever  '  vested  interest '  or 
such  like  stood  up,  gainsaying  merely,  '  I  shall  lose  profits  !  '  — 
the  willing  Legislature  would  answer,  '  Yes,  but  my  sons  and 
daughters,  will  gain  health,  life,  and  a  soul.'  — '  What  is  to  become 
of  our  Cotton-trade  1  '  cried  certain  Spinners,  when  the  Factory- 
Bill  was  proposed,  '  What  is  to  become  of  our  invaluable  Cot- 
ton-trade 1  '  The  Humanity  of  England  answered  steadfastly  . 
"  Deliver  me  those  rickety  perishing  souls  of  infants,  and  let  your 
Cotton-trade  take  its  chance.  God  himself  commands  the  one 
thing  ;  not  God  especially  the  other  thing.  We  cannot  have  pros- 
perous Cotton-trades  at  the  expense  of  keeping  the  Devil  a  part- 
ner in  them  !  "  — 

Bills  enough,  were  the  Corn-Law  Abrogation  Bill  once  passed, 
and  a  Legislature  willing  !  Nay,  this  one  Bill,  which  lies  yet 
unenacted,  a  right  Education  Bill,  is  not  this  of  itself  the  sure 
parent  of  innumerable  wise  Bills,  —  wise  regulations,  practical 
methods  and  proposals,  gradually  ripening  towards  the  state  of 
Bills?  To  irradiate  with  intelligence,  that  is  to  say,  with  order, 
arrangement  and  all  blessedness,  the  Chaotic,  Unintelligent ;  how, 
except  by  educating,  can  you  accomplish  this  1  That  thought, 
reflection,  articulate  utterance  and  understanding  be  awakened  in 


264  HOROSCOPE. 

these  individual  million  heads,  which  are  the  atoms  of  your  Chaos  ; 
there  is  no  other  way  of  illuminating  any  Chaos  !  The  sum-total 
of  intelligence  that  is  found  in  it,  determines  the  extent  of  order 
that  is  possible  for  your  Chaos,  —  the  feasibility  and  rationality  of 
what  your  Chaos  will  dimly  demand  from  you,  will  gladly  obey 
when  proposed  by  you  !  It  is  an  exact  equation  :  the  one  accu- 
rately measures  the  other.  — If  the  whole  English  People,  during 
these  '  twenty  years  of  respite,'  be  not  educated,  with  at  least 
schoolmaster's  educating,  a  tremendous  responsibility  before  God 
and  men  will  rest  somewhere  !  How  dare  any  man,  especially  a 
man  calling  himself  minister  of  God,  stand  up  in  any  Parliament 
or  place,  under  any  pretext  or  delusion,  and  for  a  day  or  an  hour, 
forbid  God's  light  to  come  into  the  world,  and  bid  the  Devil's 
Darkness  continue  in  it  one  hour  more  !  For  all  light  and  science, 
under  all  shapes,  in  all  degrees  of  perfection  is  of  God  ;  all  dark- 
ness, all  nescience,  is  of  the  Enemy  of  God.  The  schoolmaster's 
creed  is  somewhat  awry  ?  Yes,  I  have  found  few  creeds,  entirely 
correct  ;  few  light-beams  shining  white,  pure  of  admixture  :  but 
of  all  creeds  and  religions  now  or  ever  before  known,  was  not  that 
of  thoughtless,  thriftless  Animalism,  of  Distilled  Gin,  and  Stupor 
and  Despair,  unspeakably  the  least  orthodox  ?  We  will  exchange  il 
even  with  Paganism,  with  Fetishism  ;  and,  on  the  whole,  must 
exchange  it  with  something. 

An  effective  '  Teaching  Service  '  I  do  consider  that  there  must 
be,  some  Education-Secretary,  Captain-General  of  Teachers,  who 
will  actually  contrive  to  get  us  taught.  Then  again,  why  should 
there  not  be  an  •  Emigration  Service,'  and  Secretary,  with  ad- 
juncts, with  funds,  forces,  idle  Navy-ships,  and  ever-increasing 
apparatus  ;  in  fine  an  effective  System  of  Emigration,  —  so  that,  at 
length,  before  our  twenty  years  of  respite  ended,  every  honest 
willing  workman  who  found  England  too  strait,  and  the  '  Organ- 
isation of  Labour '  not  yet  sufficiently  advanced,  might  find  like- 
wise a  bridge  built  to  carry  him  into  new  Western  Lands,  there 
to  organise  with  more  elbow-room  some  Labour  for  himself? 
There  to  be  a  real  blessing,  raising  new  corn  for  us,  purchasing 
new  webs  and  hatchets  from  us  ,  leaving  us  at  least  in  peace  ,  — 
instead  of  staying  here  to  be  a  Physical-force  Chartist,  unblessed 
and  no  blessing !     Is  it  not  scandalous  to  consider  that  a  Prime 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  265 

Minister  could  raise  within  the  year,  as  I  have  seen  it  done,  a 
Hundred  and  Twenty  Millions  Sterling  to  shoot  the  French  ;  and 
we  are  stopt  short  for  want  of  the  hundredth  part  of  that  to  keep 
the  English  living?  The  bodies  of  the  English  living;  and  the 
souls  of  the  English  living  :  — these  two  '  Services,'  an  Education 
Service  and  an  Emigration  Service,  these  with  others  will  actually 
have  to  be  organised  ! 

A  free  bridge  for  Emigrants  :  why,  we  should  then  be  on  a  par 
with  America  itself,  the  most  favoured  of  all  lands  that  have  no 
Government;  and  we  should  have,  besides,  so  many  traditions 
and  mementos  of  priceless  things  which  America  has  cast  away. 
We  could  proceed  deliberately  to  '  organise  Labour,'  not  doomed 
to  perish  unless  we  effected  it  within  year  and  day ;  —  every 
willing  Worker  that  proved  superfluous,  finding  a  bridge  ready 
for  him.  This  verily  will  have  to  be  done  ;  the  Time  is  big  with 
this.  Our  little  Isle  is  grown  too  narrow  for  us,  but  the  world  is 
wide  enough  yet  for  another  Six  thousand  Years.  England's 
sure  markets  will  be  among  new  Colonies  of  English-men  in  all 
quarters  of  the  Globe.  All  men  trade  with  all  men,  when  mutu- 
ally convenient,  and  are  bound  to  do  it  by  the  Maker  of  Men  ;  our 
friends  of  China  who  guiltily  refused  to  trade,  in  these  circum- 
stances, —  had  we  not  to  argue  with  them,  in  cannon  shot  at  last, 
and  convince  them  that  they  ought  to  trade  !  '  Hostile  Tariffs  ' 
will  rise,  to  shut  us  out;  and  then  again  will  fall,  to  let  us  in: 
but  the  Sons  of  England  speakers  of  the  English  language  were 
it  nothing  more,  will  in  all  times  have  the  ineradicable  predisposi- 
tion to  trade  with  England.  Mycale  was  the  Pan-Ionion,  ren- 
dezvous of  all  the  Tribes  of  Ion,  for  old  Greece  :  why  should  not 
London  long  continue  the  All-Saxon  home,  rendezvous  of  all  the 
'  Children  of  the  Harz-Rock '  arriving  in  select  samples,  from  the 
Antipodes  and  elsewhere,  by  steam  and  otherwise,  to  the  '  season  ' 
here !  —  What  a  Future  ;  wide  as  the  world,  if  we  have  the  heart 
and  heroism  for  it,  — which,  by  God's  blessing,  we  shall : 

Keep  not  standing  fixed  and  rooted, 
Briskly  venture,  briskly  roam  ; 
Head  and  hand,  where'er  thou  foot  it, 
And  stout  heart  are  still  at  home. 

23 


266  HOROSCOPE. 

In  what  laud  the  sun  does  visit, 
Yarely  we,  whate'er  betide  ! 
To  give  space  for  wandering  is  it 
That  the  world  was  made  so  wide.* 

Fourteen  hundred  years  ago  it  was  by  a  considerable  '  Emigration 
Service,'  never  doubt  it,  by  much  enlistment,  discussion  and  appa- 
ratus, that  we  ourselves  arrived  in  this  remarkable  Island,  —  and 
got  into  our  present  difficulties  among  others  ! 

It  is  true  the  English  Legislature,  like  the  English  People,  is 
of  slow  temper  ;  essentially  conservative.  In  our  wildest  periods 
of  reform,  in  the  long  Parliament  itself,  you  notice  always  the  in- 
vincible instinct  to  hold  fast  by  the  Old  ;  to  admit  the  minimum  of 
New  ;  to  expand,  if  it  be  possible,  some  old  habit  or  method, 
already  found  fruitful,  into  new  growth  for  the  new  need.  It  is 
an  instinct  worthy  of  all  honour  ;  akin  to  all  strength  and  all 
wisdom.  The  Future  hereby  is  not  dissevered  from  the  Past,  but 
based  continuously  on  it ;  grows  with  all  the  vitalities  of  the  Past, 
and  is  rooted  down  deep  into  the  beginnings  of  us.  The  English 
Legislature  is  entirely  repugnant  to  believe  in  '  new  epochs.'  The 
English  Legislature  does  not  occupy  itself  with  epochs  ;  has  in- 
deed, other  bu^ness  to  do  than  looking  at  the  Time  Horologe  and 
hearing  it  tick  !  Nevertheless  new  epochs  do  actually  come  ;  and 
with  them  new  imperious  peremptory  necessities,  —  so  that  even 
an  English  Legislature  has  to  look  up,  and  admit,  though  with 
reluctance,  that  the  hour  has  struck.  The  hour  having  struck, 
let  us  not  say  "impossible:" — it  will  have  to  be  possible! 
"  Contrary  to  the  habits  of  Parliament,  the  habits  of  Govern- 
ment 1  "  Yes :  but  did  any  Parliament  or  Government  ever  sit  in 
a  year  Forty-three  before  1  One  of  the  most  original  unexampled 
Years  and  Epochs  ;  in  several  important  respects,  totally  unlike 
any  other  !  For  Time,  all-edacious  and  all-feracious,  does  move 
on  :  and  the  Seven  Sleepers,  awakening  hungry  after  a  hundred 
years,  find  that  it  is  not  their  old  nurses  who  can  now  give  them 
suck  ! 

For  the  rest,  let  not  any  Parliament,  Aristocracy,  Millocracy, 

*  Goethe,  Wilhclm  Meister. 


THE    ONE    INSTITUTION.  267 

or  member  of  the  Governing  Class,  condemn  with  much  triumph 
this  small  specimen  of  '  remedial  measures  ;  '  or  ask  again,  with 
the  least  anger,  of  this  Editor  :  What  is  to  be  done,  How  that 
alarming  problem  of  the  Working  Classes  is  to  be  managed  ? 
Editors  are  not  here,  foremost  of  all,  to  say  How.  A  certain 
Editor  thanks  the  gods  that  nobody  pays  him  three  hundred  thou- 
sand a  year  :  two  hundred  thousand,  twenty  thousand,  or  any 
similar  sum  of  cash,  for  saying  How  ;  — that  his  wages  are  very 
different,  his  work  somewhat  fitter  for  him.  An  Editor's  stipu 
lated  work  is  to  apprise  thee  that  it  must  be  done.  The  '  way  to 
do  it,'  is  to  try  it,  knowing  that  thou  shalt  die  if  it  be  not  done. 
There  is  the  bare  back,  there  is  the  web  of  cloth  ;  thou  shalt  cut 
me  a  coat  to  cover  the  bare  back,  those  whose  trade  it  is.  '  Impos- 
sible? '  Hapless  Fraction,  dost  thou  discern  Fate  then,  half  un- 
veiling herself  in  the  gloom  of  the  future,  with  her  gibbet-cords, 
her  steel-whips,  and  very  authentic  Tailor's  Hell  ;  waiting  to  see 
whether  it  is  '  possible  1  '  Out  with  thy  scissors,  and  cut  that 
cloth  or  thy  own  windpipe  ! 


CHAPTER   IV. 


CAPTAINS    OF    INDUSTRY, 


If  I  believed  that  Mammonism  with  its  adjuncts  was  to  continue 
henceforth  the  one  serious  principle  of  our  existence,  I  should 
reckon  it  idle  to  solicit  remedial  measures  from  any  Government, 
the  disease  being  insusceptible  of  remedy.  Government  can  do 
much,  but  it  can  in  no  wise  do  all.  Government,  as  the  most  con- 
spicuous object  in  Society,  is  called  upon  to  give  signal  of  what 
shall  be  done  ;  and,  in  many  ways,  preside  over,  further,  and 
command  the  doing  of  it.  But  the  Government  cannot  do,  by  all 
its  signalling  and  commanding,  what  the  Society  is  radically  in- 
disposed to  do  !  In  the  long  run  every  Government  is  the  exact 
symbol  of  its  People  with  their  wisdom  and  unwisdom  ;  we  have 
to  say,  Like  People  like  Government.  —  The  main  substance  of 
this  immense  Problem  of  Organising  Labour,  and  first  of  all  of 
Managing  the  Working  Classes,  will,  it  is  very  clear,  have  to  be 
solved  by  those  who  stand  practically  in  the  middle  of  it,  —  by 
those  who  themselves  work  and  preside  over  work.  Of  all  that 
can  be  enacted  by  any  Parliament  in  regard  to  it  the  germs  must 
already  lie  potentially  extant  in  those  two  classes,  who  are  to  obey 
such  enactment.  A  Human  Chaos  in  which  there  is  no  light  yon 
vainly  attempt  to  irradiate  by  light  shed  on  it :  order  never  can 
arise  there. 

But  it  is  my  firm  conviction  that  the  '  Hell  of  England  '  will 
cease  to  be  that  of  '  not  making  money  ;  '  that  we  shall  get  a 
nobler  Hell  and  a  nobler  Heaven  !  I  anticipate  light  in  the  Human 
Chaos,  glimmering,  shining  more  and  more  ;  under  manifold  true 
signals  from  without,  That  light  shall  shine.  Our  deity  no  longer 
being  Mammon,  —  O  Heavens,  each  man  will  then  say  to  himself: 
"  Why  such  deadly  haste  to  make  money?     I  shall  not  go  to 


CAPTAINS  OF  INDUSTRY.  269 

Hell,  even  if  I  do  not  make  money  !  There  is  another  Hell,  I 
am  told  !  "  Competition,  at  railway  speed,  in  all  branches  of 
commerce  and  work  will  then  abate  :  —  good  felt  hats  for  the  head, 
in  every  sense,  instead  of  seven-feet  lath-and-plaster  hats  on  wheels, 
will  then  be  discoverable  !  Bubble  periods  with  their  panics  and 
commercial  crises  will  again  become  infrequent ;  steady  modest 
industry  will  take  the  place  of  gambling  speculation.  To  be  a 
noble  Master,  among  noble  Workers,  will  again  be  the  first  ambi- 
tion with  some  few,  — to  be  a  rich  Master  only  the  second.  How 
the  inventive  Genius  of  England,  with  the  whirr  of  its  bobbins 
and  billy-rollers  shoved  somewhat  into  the  backgrounds  of  the 
brain,  will  contrive  and  devise,  not  cheaper  produce  exclusively, 
but  fairer  distribution  of  the  produce  at  its  present  cheapness  ! 
By  degrees  we  shall  again  have  a  Society  with  something  of  He- 
roism in  it,  something  of  Heaven's  Blessing  on  it ;  we  shall  have, 
as  my  German  friend  asserts,  '  instead  of  Mammon-Feudalism 
with  unsold  cotton-shirts  and  Reservation  of  the  Game,  noble  just 
Industrialism  and  Government  by  the  "Wisest ! ' 

It  is  with  the  hope  of  awakening  here  and  there  a  British  man 
to  know  himself  for  a  man  and  divine  soul,  that  a  few  words  of 
parting  admonition,  to  all  persons  to  whom  the  Heavenly  Powers 
have  lent  Power  of  any  kind  in  this  land,  may  now  be  addressed. 
And  first  to  those  same  Master  Workers,  Leaders  of  Industry  ; 
who  stand  nearest,  and  in  fact  powerfullest,  though  not  most 
prominent,  being  as  yet  in  too  many  senses  a  Virtuality  rather 
than  an  Actuality. 

The  Leaders  of  Industry,  if  Industry  is  ever  to  be  led,  are  vir- 
tually the  Captains  of  the  World  ;  if  there  be  no  nobleness  in 
them,  there  will  never  be  an  Aristocracy  more.  But  let  the  Cap- 
tains of  Industry  consider  :  once  again,  are  they  born  of  other  clay 
than  the  old  Captains  of  Slaughter  ;  doomed  forever  to  be  no 
Chivalry  but  a  mere  gold-plated  Doggery,  —  what  the  French 
well  name  Canaille,  '  Doggery  '  with  more  or  less  gold  carrion  at 
its  disposal?  Captains  of  Industry  are  the  true  Fighters,  hence- 
forth recognisable  as  the  only  true  ones  :  Fighters  against  Chaos, 
Necessity  and  the  Devils  and  Jotuns  ;  and  lead  on  Mankind  in 
that  great,  and  alone  true,  and  universal  warfare ;  the  stars  in 
23* 


270  HOROSCOPE. 

their  courses  fighting  for  them,  and  all  Heaven  and  all  Earth  say- 
ing audibly,  Well  done  !  Let  the  Captains  of  Industry  retire  into 
their  own  hearts,  and  ask  solemnly,  if  there  is  nothing  but  vul- 
turous hunger  for  fine  wines,  valet  reputation  and  gilt  carriages, 
discoverable  there  1  Of  hearts  made  by  the  Almighty  God  I  will 
not  believe  such  a  thing.  Deep-hidden  under  wretchedest  god- 
forgetting  Cants,  Epicurisms,  Dead-Sea  Apisms :  forgotten  as 
under  foulest  fat  Lethe  mud  and  weeds,  there  is  yet  in  all  hearts 
born  into  this  God's-World  a  spark  of  the  Godlike  slumbering. 
Awake,  O  nightmare  sleepers.  Awake,  arise,  or  be  forever 
fallen  !  This  is  not  playhouse  poetry  ;  it  is  sober  fact.  Our  Eng- 
land, our  world  cannot  live  as  it  is.  It  will  connect  itself  with  a 
God  again,  or  go  down  with  nameless  throes  and  fire-consumma- 
tion to  the  Devils.  Thou  who  feelest  aught  of  such  a  Godlike 
stirring  in  thee,  any  faintest  intimation  of  it  as  through  heavy- 
laden  dreams,  follow  it,  I  conjure  thee.  Arise,  save  thyself,  be 
one  of  those  that  save  thy  country. 

Bucaniers,  Chactaw  Indians,  whose  supreme  aim  in  fighting  is 
that  they  may  get  the  scalps,  the  money,  that  they  may  amass 
scalps  and  money  :  out  of  such  came  no  chivalry,  and  never  will ! 
Out  of  such  came  only  gore  and  wreck,  infernal  rage  and  misery  ; 
desperation  quenched  in  annihilation.  Behold  it,  I  bid  thee,  be- 
hold there,  and  consider  :  What  is  it  that  thou  have  a  hundred 
thousand-pound  bills  laid  up  in  thy  strong  room,  a  hundred  scalps 
hung  up  in  thy  wigwam  ?  I  value  not  them  or  thee.  Thy  scalps 
and  thy  thousand-pound  bills  are  as  yet  nothing,  if  no  nobleness 
from  within  irradiate  them  ;  if  no  chivalry  in  action,  or  in  embryo 
ever  struggling  towards  birth  and  action  be  there. 

Love  of  men  cannot  be  bought  by  cash-payment ;  and  without 
love  men  cannot  endure  to  be  together.  You  cannot  lead  a  Fight- 
ing World  without  having  it  regimented,  chivalried  :  the  thing  in 
a  day  becomes  impossible  ;  all  men  in  it,  the  highest  at  first,  the 
very  lowest  at  last,  discern  consciously  or  by  a  noble  instinct,  this 
necessity.  And  can  you  any  more  continue  to  lead  a  Working 
World  unregimented,  anarchic  1  I  answer,  and  the  Heavens  and 
Earth  are  now  answering,  No  !  The  thing  becomes  not  in  a  day 
impossible  ;  but  in  some  two  generations  it  does.  Yes,  when 
fathers  and  mothers,  in  Stockport  hunger-cellars,  begin  to  eat 


CAPTAINS  OF  INDUSTRY.  271 

their  children,  and  Irish  Widows  have  to  prove  their  relationship 
by  dying  of  typhus-fever  ;  and  amid  Governing  '  Corporations  of 
the  Best  and  Bravest'  busy  to  preserve  their  gain  by  'bushing,' 
dark  millions  of  God's  human  creatures  start  up  in  mad  Chart- 
isms, impracticable  Sacred-Mouths,  and  Manchester  Insurrec- 
tions ;  —  and  there  is  a  virtual  Industrial  Aristocracy  only  half- 
alive,  spell-bound  amid  money  bags  and  ledgers  ;  and  an  actual 
Idle  Aristocracy  seemingly  near  dead  in  somnolent  delusions,  in 
trespasses  and  double-barrels  ;  '  sliding,'  as  on  inclined  planes, 
which  every  new  year  they  soap  with  new  Hansard's-jargon  un- 
der God's  sky,  and  so  on  sliding  ever  faster  towards  a  '  scale  '  and 
balance-scale  whereon  is  written,  Thou  art  found  wanting ;  —  in 
such  days,  after  a  generation  or  two,  I  say,  it  does  become  even 
to  the  low  and  simple,  very  palpably  impossible  !  No  Working 
World,  any  more  than  a  Fighting  World,  can  be  led  on  without 
a  noble  chivalry  of  Work,  and  laws  and  fixed  rules  which  follow 
out  of  that,  —  far  nobler  than  any  chivalry  of  Fighting  was.  As 
an  anarchic  multitude  on  mere  supply-and-demand,  it  is  becoming 
inevitable  that  we  dwindle  in  blind  suicidal  convulsion,  and  self- 
abrasion,  frightful  to  the  imagination,  into  Chactaw  Workers. 
With  wigwam  and  scalps,  —  with  palaces  and  thousand-pound 
bills  ;  with  savagery,  depopulation,  chaotic  desolation  !  Good 
Heavens,  will  not  one  French  Revolution  and  Reign  of  Terror 
suffice  us,  but  must  there  be  two  1  There  will  be  two  if  needed, 
there  will  be  twenty  if  needed  ;  there  will  be  precisely  as  many 
as  are  needed.  The  Laws  of  Nature  will  have  themselves  ful- 
filled.    That  is  a  thing  certain  to  me. 

Your  gallant  battle-hosts  and  work-hosts,  as  the  others  did,  will 
need  to  be  made  loyally  yours  ;  they  must  and  will  be  regulated, 
methodically  secured  in  their  just  share  of  conquest  under  you  ; 
joined  with  you  in  veritable  brotherhood,  sonhood,  by  quite  other 
and  deeper  ties  than  those  of  temporary  day's  wages  !  How 
would  mere  red-coated  regiments,  to  say  nothing  of  chivalrous, 
fight  for  you,  if  you  could  discharge  them  on  the  evening  of  the 
battle  on  payment  of  the  stipulated  shillings,  —  and  they  dis- 
charge you  on  the  morning  of  it !  Chelsea  Hospitals,  pensions, 
promotions,  rigorous  lasting  covenant  on  the  one  side  and  on  the 
other,  are  indispensable  even  for  a  hired  fighter.     The  Feudal 


272  HOROSCOPE. 

Baron,  much  more,  —  how  could  he  subsist  with  mere  temporary 
mercenaries  round  him,  at  sixpence  a  day  ;  ready  to  go  over  to 
the  other  side,  if  seven-pence  were  offered  1  He  could  not  have 
subsisted  ;  —  and  his  noble  instinct  saved  him  from  the  necessity 
of  even  trying  !  The  Feudal  Baron  had  a  man's  soul  in  him  ;  to 
which  anarchy,  mutiny,  and  the  other  fruits  of  temporary  mer- 
cenaries, were  intolerable  ;  he  had  never  been  a  Baron  otherwise, 
but  had  continued  a  Chactaw  and  Bucanier.  He  felt  it  precious, 
and  at  last  it  became  habitual,  and  his  fruitful  enlarged  existence 
included  it  as  a  necessity,  to  have  men  round  him  who  in  heart 
loved  him  ;  whose  life  he  watched  over  with  rigour  yet  with  love, 
who  were  prepared  to  give  their  life  for  him  if  need  came.  It 
was  beautiful  ;  it  was  human  !  Man  lives  not  otherwise,  nor  can 
live  contented,  anywhere  or  any  when.  Isolation  is  the  sum-total 
of  wretchedness  to  man.  To  be  cut  off,  to  be  left  solitary ;  to 
have  a  world  alien,  not  your  world  ;  all  a  hostile  camp  for  you; 
not  a  home  at  all,  of  hearts  and  faces  who  are  yours,  whose  you 
are  !  It  is  the  frightfullest  enchantment ;  too  truly  a  work  of  the 
Evil  One.  To  have  neither  superior,  nor  inferior,  nor  equal, 
united  manlike  to  you.  Without  father,  without  child,  without 
brother.  Man  knows  no  sadder  destiny.  '  How  is  each  of  us,' 
exclaims  Jean  Paul  '  so  lonely  in  the  wide  bosom  of  the  All  ?  ' 
Encased  each  of  us  as  in  his  transparent  '  ice  palace  ; '  our  brother 
visible  in  his,  making  signals  and  gesticulations  to  us  ;  —  visible, 
but  forever  unattainable  :  on  his  bosom  we  shall  never  rest,  nor 
he  on  ours.     It  was  not  a  God  that  did  this  ;  no  ! 

Awake  ye  noble  Workers,  warriors  in  the  one  true  war  :  all 
this  must  be  remedied.  It  is  you  who  are  already  half-alive, 
whom  I  will  welcome  into  life ,  whom  I  will  conjure  in  God's 
name  to  shake  off  your  enchanted  sleep,  and  live  wholly  !  Cease 
to  count  scalps,  gold-purses  ;  not  in  these  lies  your  or  our  salvation. 
Even  these,  if  you  count  only  these,  will  not  long  be  left.  Let 
bucaniering  be  put  far  from  you  ;  alter,  speedily  abrogate  all  laws 
of  the  bucaniers,  if  you  would  gain  any  victory  that  shall  endure. 
Let  God's  justice,  let  pity,  nobleness  and  manly  valour,  with 
more  gold  purses  or  with  fewer,  testify  themselves  in  this  your 
brief  Life-transit  to  all  the  Eternities,  the  Gods  and  Silences.  It 
is  to  you  I  call ;  for  ye  are  not  dead,  ya  are  already  half- alive  : 


CAPTAINS  OF  INDUSTRY.  273 

there  is  in  you  a  sleepless  dauntless  energy,  the  prime-matter  of 
all  nobleness  in  man.  Honour  to  you  in  your  kind.  It  is  to  you 
I  call  ;  ye  know  at  least  this,  That  the  mandate  of  God  to  His 
creature  man  is  :  Work  !  The  future  Epic  of  the  world  rests  not 
with  those  that  are  near  dead,  but  with  those  that  are  alive,  and 
those  that  are  coming  into  life. 

Look  around  you,  Your  world-hosts  are  all  in  Mutiny,  in  con- 
fusion, destitution  ;  on  the  eve  of  fiery  wreck  and  madness!  They 
will  not  march  farther  for  you  on  the  sixpence  a-day-and-supply- 
and-demand  principle  :  they  will  not  ;  nor  ought  they,  nor  can 
they.  Ye  shall  reduce  them  to  order,  begin  reducing  them.  To 
order,  to  just  subordination  ;  noble  loyalty  in  return  for  noble 
guidance.  Their  souls  are  driven  nigh  mad  ;  let  yours  be  sane 
and  ever  saner.  Not  as  a  bewildered  bewildering  mob  ;  but  as 
a  firm  regimented  mass,  with  real  Captains  over  them,  will  these 
men  march  any  more.  All  human  interests,  combined  human 
endeavours,  and  social  growths  in  this  world,  have,  at  a  certain 
stage  of  their  developement,  required  organising  :  and  Work,  the 
grandest  of  human  interests,  does  now  require  it. 

God  knows,  the  task  will  be  hard  :  but  no  noble  task  was  ever 
easy.  This  task  will  wear  away  your  lives,  and  the  lives  of  your 
sons  and  grandsons  :  but  for  what  purpose,  if  not  for  tasks  like 
this,  were  lives  given  to  men  1  Ye  shall  cease  to  count  your 
thousand-pound  scalps,  the  noble  of  you  shall  cease  !  Nay  the 
very  scalps,  as  I  say,  will  not  long  be  left  if  you  count  only  these. 
Ye  shall  cease  wholly  to  be  barbarous,  vulturous  Chactaws,  and 
become  noble  European  Nineteenth-Century  Men.  Ye  shall 
know  that  Mammon,  in  never  such  gigs  and  flunkey  '  respectabil- 
ities,' is  not  the  alone  God;  that  of  himself  he  is  but  a  Devil, 
and  even  a  Brute-god. 

Difficult  1  Yes,  it  will  be  difficult.  The  short-fibre  cotton  ; 
that  too  was  difficult.  The  waste  cotton  shrub,  long  useless, 
disobedient,  as  the  thistle  by  the  wayside,  —  have  ye  not  conquer- 
ed it ;  made  it  into  beautiful  bandana  webs  ;  white  woven  shirts 
for  men  :  bright-tinted  air-garments  wherein  flit  goddesses.  Ye 
have  shivered  mountains  asunder  ;  made  the  hard  iron  pliant  to 
you  as  soft  putty  :  the  Forest-giants,  Marsh -jotuns  bear  sheaves 
of  golden  grain  ;     ^Egir  the  Sea-demon  himself  stretches  his  back 


274  HOROSCOPE. 

for  a  sleek  highway,  to  you,  and  on  Firehorses  and  Wind-horses 
ye  career.  Ye  are  most  strong.  Thor,  red-bearded,  with  his 
blue  sun-eyes,  with  his  cheery  heart  and  strong  thunder-hammer, 
he  and  you  have  prevailed.  Ye  are  most  strong,  ye  Sons  of  the 
icy  North,  of  the  far  East,  —  far  marching  from  your  rugged 
Eastern  Wilderness,  hitherward  from  the  grey  Dawn  of  Time  ! 
Ye  are  Sons  of  the  JoYzm-land  ;  the  land  of  Difficulties  Conquered. 
Difficult  1  You  must  try  this  thing.  Once  try  it  with  the  under- 
standing, that  it  will  and  shall  have  to  be  done.  Try  it  as  ye  try 
the  much  paltrier  thing,  making  of  money  !  I  will  bet  on  you  once 
more,  against  all  Jotuns,  Tailor-gods,  Double-barrelled  Law-wards 
and  Denizens  of  Chaos  whatsoever  ! 


CHAPTER  V. 


PERMANENCE. 


Standing  on  the  threshold,  nay  as  yet  outside  the  threshold,  of  a 
'  Chivalry  of  Labour,'  and  an  immeasurable  Future  which  it  is 
to  fill  with  fruitfulness  and  verdant  shade  :  when  so  much  has  not 
yet  come  even  to  the  rudimental  state,  and  all  speech  of  positive 
enactments  were  hazardous  in  those  who  know  this  business  only 
by  the  eye,  —  let  us  here  hint  at  simply  one  widest  universal 
principle,  as  the  basis  from  which  all  organisation  hitherto  has 
grownup  among  men,  and  all,  henceforth  will  have  to  "grow : 
The  principle  of  Permanent  contract  instead  of  Temporary. 

Permanent  not  Temporary  :  —  you  do  not  hire  the  mere  red- 
coated  fighter  by  the  day,  but  by  the  score  of  years  !  Permanence, 
persistence  is  the  first  conditon  of  all  fruitfulness  in  the  ways  of 
men.  The  '  tendency  to  persevere '  to  persist  in  spite  of  hindran- 
ces, discouragements  and  '  impossibilities  :  '  it  is  this,  that  in  all 
things  distinguishes  the  strong  soul  from  the  weak  ;  the  civilized 
burgher  from  the  nomadic  savage,  —  the  species  Man  from  the 
Genus  Ape  !  The  Nomad  has  his  very  house  set  on  wheels  ;  the 
Nomad,  and  in  a  still  higher  degree  the  Ape,  are  all  for  'liberty  ; ' 
the  privilege  to  flit  continually  is  indispensable  for  them.  Alas, 
in  how  many  ways,  does  our  humour,  in  this  swift-rolling  self- 
abrading  Time,  shew  itself  nomadic,  apelike  ;  mournful  enough 
to  him  that  looks  on  it  with  eyes  !  This  humour  will  have  to  abate  ; 
it  is  the  first  element  of  all  fertility  in  human  things  that  such 
liberty  of  apes  and  nomads  do  abridge  itself,  give  place  to  a  better. 
The  civilised  man  lives  not  in  wheeled  houses.  He  builds  stone 
castles,  plants  lands,  makes  Life-long  marriage-contracts  ;  — has 
long-dated  hundredfold  possessions,  not  to  be  valued  in  the  money- 
market  ;    has  pedigrees,  libraries,  law-codes,  has  memories  and 


276  HOROSCOPE. 

hopes  even  for  this  Earth  that  reach  our  thousands  of  years. 
Life-long  marriage-contracts  :  how  much  preferable  were  year- 
long or  monthlong  —  to  the  Nomad  or  Ape  ! 

Month-long  contracts  please  me  little,  in  any  province  where 
there  can  by  possibility  be  found  virtue  enough  for  more.  Month- 
long  contracts  do  not  answer  well  even  with  your  house -servants  ; 
the  liberty  on  both  sides  to  change  every  month  is  growing  very 
apelike,  nomadic  ;  —  and  I  hear  philosophers  predict  that  it  will 
alter,  or  that  strange  results  will  follow  :  that  wise  men,  pestered 
with  nomads,  with  unattached  ever-shifting  spies  and  enemies 
rather  than  friends  and  servants,  will  gradually,  weighing  sub- 
stance against  semblance,  with  indignation,  dismiss  such,  down 
almost  to  the  very  shoeblack,  and  say,  "  Begone  ;  I  will  serve 
myself  rather,  and  have  peace  !  "  Gurth  was  hired  for  life  to 
Cedric,  and  Cedric  to  Gurth.  O,  Anti-Slavery  Convention,  loud- 
sounding  long-eared  Exeter-Hall  —  But  in  thee  too  is  a  kind  of  in- 
stinct towards  justice,  and  I  will  complain  of  nothing.  Only, 
black  Quashee  over  the  seas  being  once  sufficiently  attended  to,  wilt 
thou  not  perhaps  open  thy  dull  sodden  eyes  to  the  '  sixty  thousand 
valets  '  in  London  itself  who  are  yearly  dismissed  to  the  streets, 
to  be  what  they  can,  when  the  season  ends;  —  or  to  the  hunger- 
stricken,  pallid,  yellow-coloured  '  Free  Labourers  '  in  Lancashire, 
Yorkshire,  Buckinghamshire  and  all  other  shires  !  These  yel- 
low-coloured, for  the  present,  absorb  all  my  sympathies  :  if  I  had 
a  Twenty  Millions,  with  model-Farms  and  Niger  Expeditions,  it 
is  to  these  that  I  would  give  it !  Quashee  has  already  victuals, 
clothing  ;  Quashee  is  not  dying  of  such  despair  as  the  yellow- 
coloured  pale  man's.  Quashee,  it  must  be  owned,  is  hitherto  a 
kind  of  blockhead.  The  Haiti  Duke  of  Marmalade,  educated  now 
for  almost  half  a  century,  seems  to  have  next  to  no  sense  in  him. 
Why,  in  one  of  those  Lancashire  Weavers,  dying  of  hunger, 
there  is  more  thought  and  heart,  a  greater  arithmetical  amount  of 
misery  and  desperation,  than  in  whole  gangs  of  Quashees.  It 
must  be  owned  thy  eyes  are  of  the  sodden  sort  ;  and  with  thy 
emancipationings,  and  thy  twenty-millionings  and  long-eared 
clamourings,  thou,  like  Robespierre  with  his  pasteboard  Eire  Su- 
preme, threatenest  to  become  a  bore  to  us,  Avec  ton  Eire-Supreme 
tu  commences  m'embeter  !  — 


PERMANENCE.  277 

In  a  Printed  Sheet  of  the  assiduous,  much-abused,  and  truly 
useful  Mr.  Chadwick's,  containing  queries  and  responses  from  far 
and  near,  as  to  this  great  question,  '  What  is  the  effect  of  Educa- 
tion on  working  men  in  respect  of  their  value  as  mere  workers  1  ' 
the  present  Editor,  reading  with  satisfaction  a  decisive  unani- 
mous verdict  as  to  Education,  leads  with  inexpressible  interest 
this  special  remark,  put  in  by  way  of  marginal  incidental  note, 
from  a  practical  manufacturing  Quaker,  whom,  as  he  is  anony- 
mous, we  will  call  friend  Prudence.  Prudence  keeps  a  thousand 
workmen  ;  has  striven  in  all  ways  to  attach  them  to  him  ;  has 
provided  conversational  soirees  ;  play  grounds,  bands  of  music  for 
the  young  ones  ;  went  even  '  the  length  of  buying  them  a  drum  :  ' 
all  which  has  turned  out  to  be  an  excellent  investment.  For  a 
certain  person,  marked  here  by  a  black  stroke,  whom  we  shall 
name  Blank,  living  over  the  way,  —  he  also  keeps  somewhere 
about  a  thousand  men  ;  but  has  done  none  of  these  things  for 
them,  nor  any  other  thing,  except  due  payment  of  the  wages  by 
supply-and-demand.  Blank's  workers  are  perpetually  getting  into 
mutiny,  into  broils  and  coils :  every  six  months,  we  suppose, 
Blank  has  a  strike  ;  every  one  month,  every  day  and  every  hour, 
they  are  fretting  and  obstructing  the  shortsighted  Blank  ;  pilfer- 
ing from  him,  wasting  and  idling  for  him,  omitting  and  commit- 
ting for  him.  "  I  would  not,"  says  Friend  Prudence,  "  exchange 
my  workers  for  his  with  seven  thousand  pounds  to  boot. ' '  * 

Right,  O  honourable  Prudence  :  thou  art  wholly  in  the  right  : 
seven  thousand  pounds  even  as  a  matter  of  profit  for  this  world, 
nay,  for  the  mere  cash-market  of  this  world  !  And  as  a  matter  of 
profit  not  for  this  world  only,  but  for  the  other  world  and  all 
worlds,  it  outweighs  the  Bank  of  England  !  —  Can  the  sagacious 
reader  descry  here,  as  it  were  the  outmost  inconsiderable  rock- 
ledge  of  a  universal  rock-foundation,  deep  once  more  as  the  cen- 
tre of  the  world  ;  emerging  so,  in  the  experience  of  this  good 
Quaker,  through  the  Stygian  mud-vortexes  and  general  Mother 
of  Dead  Dogs,  whereon  for  the  present  all  sways  and  insecurely 
hovers  as  if  ready  to  be  swallowed  ! 

*  Report  on  the  training  of  Pauper  Children  (1841),  p.  18. 
24 


278  HOROSCOPE. 

Some  Permanence  of  Contract  is  already  almost  possible  ;  the 
principle  of  Permanence,  year  by  year  enlarged,  better  seen  into, 
and  elaborated,  may  enlarge  itself,  expand  gradually  on  every 
side  into  a  system.  This  once  secured,  the  basis  of  all  good 
results  were  laid.  Once  permanent,  you  do  not  quarrel  with  the 
first  difficulty  on  your  path,  and  quit  it  in  weak  disgust  ;  you 
reflect  that  it  cannot  be  quitted,  that  it  must  be  conquered,  a  wise 
arrangement  fallen  on  with  regard  to  it.  Ye  foolish  Wedded 
Two,  who  have  quarrelled,  between  whom  the  Evil  Spirit  has 
stirred  up  transient  strife  and  bitterness,  so  that  '  incompatibility  ' 
seems  almost  nigh,  ye  are  nevertheless  the  Two  who,  by  long 
habit  were  it  by  nothing  more,  do  best  of  all  others  suit  each 
other  :  it  is  expedient  for  your  own  two  foolish  selves,  say 
nothing  of  the  infants,  pedigrees  and  public  in  general,  that  ye 
agree  again  ;  that  ye  put  away  the  Evil  Spirit,  and  wisely  on  both 
hands  struggle  for  the  guidance  of  a  Good  Spirit ! 

The  very  horse  that  is  permanent,  how  much  kindlier  do  his 
rider  and  he  work,  than  the  temporary  one  hired  on  any  hack 
principle  yet  known  !  I  am  for  permanence  in  all  things,  at  the 
earliest  possible  moment,  and  to  the  latest  possible.  Blessed 
is  he  that  continueth  where  he  is.  Here  let  us  rest,  and  lay 
out  seedfields  ;  here  let  us  learn  to  dwell.  Here,  even  here,  the 
orchards  that  we  plant  will  yield  us  fruit ;  the  acorns  will  be 
wood  and  pleasant  umbrage,  if  we  wait.  How  much  grows 
everywhere,  if  we  do  but  wait.  Through  the  swamps  we  will 
shape  causeways,  force  purifying  drains  ;  we  will  learn  to  thread 
the  rocky  inaccessibilities,  and  beaten  tracks,  worn  smooth  by 
mere  travelling  of  human  feet,  will  form  themselves.  Not  a  diffi- 
culty but  can  transfigure  itself  into  a  triumph; — not  even  a 
deformity,  but,  if  our  own  soul  have  imprinted  worth  on  it,  will 
grow  dear  to  us.  The  sunny  plains  and  deep  indigo  transparent 
skies  of  Italy  are  all  indifferent  to  the  great  sick  heart  of  a  Sir 
Walter  Scott  :  on  the  back  of  the  Apennines,  in  wild  spring 
weather,  the  sight  of  bleak  Scotch  firs,  and  snow-spotted  heath 
and  desolation,  brings  tears  into  his  eyes.* 

O  unwise  mortals  that  forever  change  and  shift,  and  say,  Yon- 

*  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott. 


PERMANENCE.  279 

der  not  Here  !  Wealth  richer  than  both  the  Indies  lies  every- 
where for  man,  if  he  will  endure.  Not  his  oaks  only  and  his 
fruit-trees,  his  very  heart  roots  itself  wherever  he  will  abide  ;  — 
roots  itself,  draws  nourishment  from  the  deep  fountains  of  Uni- 
versal Being.  Vagrant  Sam-Slicks  who  rove  over  the  Earth 
doing  'strokes  of  trade,'  what  wealth  have  they  1  Horseloads, 
shiploads  of  White  or  Yellow  metal :  in  very  sooth,  what  are 
these  ?  Slick  rests  nowhere,  he  is  homeless.  He  can  build  stone 
or  marble  houses ;  but  to  continue  in  them  is  denied  him.  The 
wealth  of  a  man  is  the  number  of  things  which  he  loves  and 
blesses,  which  he  is  loved  and  blessed  by  !  The  herdsman  in  his 
poor  clay  shealing,  where  his  very  cow  and  dog  are  friends  to 
him,  and  not  a  cataract  but  carries  memories  for  him,  and  not  a 
mountain-top  but  nods  old  recognition  ;  his  life,  all  encircled  as 
in  blessed  Mother's-arms,  is  it  poorer  than  Slick's  with  the  ass- 
loads  of  yellow  metal  on  his  back  1  Unhappy  Slick  !  Alas, 
there  has  so  much  grown  nomadic,  apelike,  with  us  :  so  much 
will  have,  with  whatever  pain,  repugnance,  and  '  impossibility,'  to 
alter  itself,  to  fix  itself  again,  — in  some  wise  way,  in  any  not 
delirious  way  !  — 

A  question  arises  here  :  Whether,  in  some  ulterior,  perhaps 
some  not  far  distant  stage  of  this  '  Chivalry  of  Labour,'  your 
Master  Worker  may  not  find  it  possible  and  needful  to  grant  his 
workers  permanent  interest  in  his  enterprise  and  theirs  1  So  that 
it  become  in  practical  result,  what  in  essential  fact  and  justice  it 
ever  is,  a  joint  enterprise  ;  all  men,  from  the  Chief  Master  down 
to  the  lowest  Overseer  and  Operative,  economically  as  well  as 
loyally  concerned  for  it?  —  Which  question  I  do  not  answer. 
The  answer,  near  or  else  far,  is  perhaps,  Yes ;  —  and  yet  one 
knows  the  difficulties.  Despotism  is  essential  in  most  enterprises  ; 
I  am  told,  they  do  not  tolerate  '  freedom  of  debate  '  on  board  a 
Seventy-four !  Republican  Senate  and  plebiscita  would  not 
answer  well  in  Cotton-mills.  And  yet  observe  these  too  :  Free- 
dom, not  nomad's  or  Ape's  Freedom,  but  man's  Freedom  ;  this 
is  indispensable.  We  must  have  it,  and  will  have  it !  To  recon- 
cile Despotism  with  Freedom  ;  — well,  is  that  such  a  mystery? 
Do  you  not,  already  know  the  way  1     It  is  to  make  your  Despot- 


280  HOROSCOPE. 

ism  Just,  Rigorous  as  Destiny  ;  but  just  too,  as  Destiny  and  its 
Laws.  The  Laws  of  God  ;  all  men  obey  these,  and  have  no 
Freedom  at  all  but  in  obeying  them.  The  way  is  already  known, 
part  of  the  way  ;  —  and  courage  and  some  qualities  are  needed  for 
walking  on  in  it ! 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE    LANDED. 


A  man  with  fifty,  with  five  hundred,  with  a  thousand  pounds  a 
day,  given  him  freely,  without  condition  at  all,  — on  condition  as 
it  now  seems,  that  he  will  sit  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and 
do  no  mischief,  pass  no  corn-laws  or  the  like,  — he  too,  you  would 
say,  is  or  might  be  a  rather  strong  Worker !  He  is  a  Worker 
with  such  tools  as  no  man  in  this  world  ever  before  had.  But,  in 
practice,  very  astonishing,  very  ominous  to  look  at,  he  proves  not 
a  strong  Worker ;  —  you  are  too  happy  if  he  will  prove  but  a 
No-worker,  do  nothing,  and  not  be  a  Wrong- Worker. 

You  ask  him,  at  the  year's  end,  "  Where  is  your  three  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds ;  what  have  you  realised  to  us  with  that?" 
He  answers,  in  indignant  surprise,  "  Done  with  it?  W^ho  are 
you  that  ask"?  I  have  eaten  it,  I  and  my  flunkies,  and  parasites, 
and  slaves  two-footed  and  four-footed,  in  an  ornamental  manner  ; 
and  I  am  here  alive  by  it ;  I  am  realised  by  it  to  you  !"  It  is,  as 
we  have  often  said,  such  an  answer  as  was  never  before  given 
under  this  Sun.  An  answer  that  fills  me  with  boding  apprehen- 
sion, with  foreshadows  of  despair.  0  stolid  use-and-worst  of  an 
atheistic  Half  Century,  O  Ignavia,  Tailor-godhood,  soul-killing 
Cant,  to  what  passes  art  thou  bringing  us  !  Out  of  the  loud- 
piping  whirlwind,  audibly  to  him  that  has  ears,  the  Highest  God 
is  again  announcing  in  these  days:  "Idleness  shall  not  be." 
God  has  said  it,  man  cannot  gainsay. 

Ah,  how  happy  were  it,  if  he,  this  Aristocratic  Worker  would, 
in  like  manner,  see  his  work  and  do  it !  It  is  frightful  seeking 
another  to  do  it  for  him.  Guillotines,  Meudon  Tanneries,  and 
half-a-rnillion  men  shot  dead,  have  already  been  expended  in  that 
business  ;  and  it  is  yet  far  from  done.  This  man  too  is  some- 
24* 


282  HOROSCOPE. 

thing  ;  nay  he  is  a  great  thing.  Look  on  him  there  :  a  man  of 
manful  aspect ;  something  of  the  '  cheerfulness  of  pride  '  still 
lingering  in  him.  A  free  air  of  graceful  stoicism,  of  easy  silent 
dignity  sits  well  on  him  ;  in  his  heart,  could  we  reach  it,  lie  ele- 
ments of  generosity,  self-sacrificing  justice,  true  human  valour. 
Why  should  he,  with  such  appliances,  stand  an  incumbrance  in  the 
Present ;  perish  disastrously  out  of  the  Future !  From  no  section 
of  the  Future  would  we  lose  these  noble  courtesies,  —  impalpable 
yet  all-controlling  ;  these  dignified  reticences,  these  kingly  simpli- 
cities, —  lose  aught  of  what  the  fruitful  Past  still  gives  us  token  of, 
memento  of,  in  this  man  !  Can  we  not  save  him  ;  — can  he  not 
help  us  to  save  him  !  A  brave  man  he  too,  had  not  undivine  Ig- 
navia,  Hearsay,  Speech  without  meaning,  —  had  not  Cant,  thou- 
sandfold Cant  within  him,  and  around  him,  enveloping  him  like 
choke-damp,  like  thick  Egyptian  darkness,  thrown  his  soul  into 
asphyxia,  as  it  were  extinguished  his  soul ;  so  that  he  sees  not, 
hears  not,  and  Moses  and  all  the  Prophets  address  him  in  vain. 

Will  he  awaken,  be  alive  again,  and  have  a  soul ;  or  is  this 
death-fit  very  death?  It  is  a  question  of  questions,  for  himself 
and  for  us  all!  Alas,  is  there  no  noble  work  for  this  man  too? 
Has  he  not  thickheaded  ignorant  boors  ;  lazy,  enslaved  farmers, 
weedy  lands?  Lands!  Has  he  not  weary  heavy-laden  ploughers 
of  land  ;  immortal  souls  of  men,  ploughing,  ditching,  day-drudg- 
ing, bare  of  back,  empty  of  stomach,  nigh  desperate  of  heart; 
and  none  peaceably  to  help  them  but  he  under  Heaven  ?  Does 
he  find,  with  his  three  hundred  thousand  pounds,  no  noble  thing 
trodden  down  in  the  thoroughfares,  which  it  were  godlike  to  help 
up?  Can  he  do  nothing  for  his  Burns  but  make  a  Gauger  of 
him  ;  lionize  him,  bedinner  him,  for  a  foolish  while  ;  then  whistle 
him  down  the  wind  to  desperation  and  bitter  death?  His  work 
too  is  difficult,  in  these  modern,  far-dislocated  ages.  But  it  may 
be  done  ;  it  may  be  tried,  — it  must  be  done. 

A  modern  Duke  of  Weimar,  not  a  god  he  either,  but  a  human 
Duke,  levied,  as  I  reckon,  in  rents  and  taxes  and  all  incomings 
whatsoever,  less  than  several  of  our  English  Dukes  do  in  rent 
alone.  The  Duke  of  Weimar,  with  these  incomings,  had  to 
govern,  judge,  defend,  every  way  administer  his  Dukedom.  He 
does  all  this  as  few  others  did  :  and  he  improves  lands  besides  all 


THE    LANDED.  283 

this,  makes  river-embankments,  maintains  not  soldiers  only  but 
Universities  and  Institutions;  —  and  in  his  Court  were  there  four 
men  :  Wieland,  Herder,  Schiller,  Goethe.  Not  as  parasites 
which  was  impossible  ;  not  as  table-wits  and  poetic  Katerfeltoes  ; 
but  as  noble  Spiritual  Men  working  under  a  noble  Practical  Man. 
Shielded  by  him  from  many  miseries,  — perhaps  from  many  short- 
comings, destructive  aberrations.  Heaven  had  sent,  once  more, 
heavenly  Light  into  the  world  ;  and  this  man's  honour  was  that  he 
gave  it  welcome.  A  new  noble  kind  of  Clergy  under  an  old  but 
still  noble  kind  of  King  !  I  reckon  that  this  one  Duke  of  Weimar 
did  more  for  the  Culture  of  his  Nation,  than  all  the  English  Dukes 
and  Duces  now  extant,  or  that  were  extant  since  Henry  the 
Eighth  gave  them  the  Church  Lands  to  eat,  have  done  for  theirs  ! 
—  I  am  ashamed,  I  am  alarmed  for  my  English  Dukes  :  What 
word  have  I  to  say? 

If  our  actual  Aristocracy  appointed  '  Best  and  Bravest,'  will  be 
wise,  how  inexpressibly  happy  for  us  !  If  not,  —  the  voice  of 
God  from  the  whirlwind  is  very  audible  to  me.  Nay,  I  will 
thank  the  Great  God ;  that  He  has  said,  in  whatever  fearful 
ways,  and  just  wrath  against  us,  "  Idleness  shall  be  no  more." 
Idleness?  The  awakened  soul  of  man,  all  but  the  asphyxied  soul 
of  man,  turns  from  it  as  from  worse  than  Death.  It  is  the  Life-in- 
Death  of  Poet  Coleridge.  That  fable  of  the  Dead-Sea  Apes 
ceases  to  be  a  fable.  The  poor  Worker  starved  to  death  is  not 
the  saddest  of  sights.  He  lies  there,  dead  on  his  shield  :  fallen 
down  into  the  bosom  of  his  old  Mother ;  with  haggard,  pale  face, 
sorrow-worn,  but  stilled  now  into  divine  peace,  silently  appeals  to 
the  Eternal  God  and  all  the  Universe,  —  the  most  silent,  the  most 
eloquent  of  men. 

Exceptions,  ah  yes,  thank  Heaven,  we  know  there  are  excep- 
tions. Our  case  were  too  hard  were  there  not  exceptions,  and 
partial  exceptions  not  a  few,  whom  we  know,  and  whom  we  do 
not  know.  Honour  to  the  name  of  Ashley,  —  honour  to  this  and 
the  other  valiant  Abdiel,  found  faithful  still  ;  —  who  would  fain, 
by  work  and  by  word,  admonish  their  Order  not  to  rush  upon  de- 
struction !  These  are  they  who  will,  if  not  save  their  Order, 
postpone  the  wreck  of  it ;  — by  whom,  under  blessing  of  the  Up- 
per Powers,  '  a  quiet  euthanasia  spread  over  generations,  instead 


284  HOROSCOPE. 

of  a  swift  torture -death  concentered  into  years,'  may  be  brought 
about  for  many  things.  All  honour  and  success  to  these.  The 
noble  man  can  still  strive  nobly  to  save  and  serve  his  Order  ;  at 
lowest,  he  can  remember  the  precept  of  the  Prophet :  "  Come 
out  of  her  my  people  ;    come  out  of  her  !  " 

To  sit  idle  aloft,  like  living  statues,  like  absurd  Epicurus'- 
gods,  in  pampered  isolation,  in  exclusion  from  the  glorious  fate- 
ful battle-field  of  this  God's- World,  — it  is  a  poor  life  for  a  man, 
when  all  Upholsterers  and  French  Cooks  have  done  their  utmost 
for  it !  —  Nay,  what  a  shallow  delusion  is  this  we  have  all  got 
into.  That  any  man  should  or  can  keep  himself  apart  from  men, 
have  '  no  business '  with  them,  except  a  cash  account  '  business  ' ! 
It  is  the  silliest  tale  a  distressed  generation  of  men  ever  took  to 
telling  one  another.  Men  cannot  live  isolated  ;  we  are  all  bound 
together,  for  mutual  good  or  else  for  mutual  misery,  as  living 
nerves  in  the  same  body.  No  highest  man  can  disunite  himself 
from  any  lowest.  Consider  it.  Your  poor  Werter  blowing  out 
his  distracted  existence  because  Charlotte  will  not  have  the 
keeping  thereof:  this  is  no  peculiar  phasis  ;  it  is  simply  the 
highest  expression  of  a  phasis  traceable  wherever  one  human 
creature  meets  another  !  Let  the  meanest  crookbacked  Thersites 
teach  the  supremest  Agamemnon  that  he  actually  does  not  rever- 
ence him,  the  supremest  Agamemnon's  eyes  flash  fire  responsive  ; 
a  real  pain  and  partial  insanity  has  seized  Agamemnon.  Strange 
enough  :  a  many-counselled  Ulysses  is  set  in  motion  by  a  scoun- 
drel blockhead  ;  plays  tunes,  like  a  barrel  organ,  at  the  scoundrel- 
blockhead's  touch,  —  has  to  snatch,  namely,  his  sceptre  cudgel, 
and  weal  the  crooked  back  with  bumps  and  thumps  ! 

Let  a  Chief  of  men  reflect  well  on  it.  Not  in  having  '  no  bu- 
siness '  with  men,  but  in  having  no  unjust  business  with  them, 
and  in  having  all  manner  of  true  and  just  business,  can  either  his 
or  their  blessedness  be  found  possible,  and  this  waste  world  be- 
come, for  both  parties,  a  home  and  peopled  garden. 

Men  reverence  men.  Men  do  worship  in  that  '  one  temple  of 
the  world,'  as  Novalis  calls  it,  '  the  Presence  of  a  Man.'  Hero- 
worship,  true  and  blessed,  or  else  mistaken,  false  and  accursed, 
goes  on  everywhere  and  every  when.     In  this  world  there  is  one 


THE    LANDED.  285 

godlike  thing,  the  essence  of  all  that  was  or  ever  will  be  of  god- 
like in  this  world  :  the  veneration  done  to  Human  Worth  by  the 
hearts  of  men.  Hero-worship,  in  the  souls  of  the  heroic,  of  the 
clear  and  wise,  —  it  is  the  perpetual  Presence  of  Heaven  in  our 
poor  Earth  :  when  it  is  not  there,  Heaven  is  veiled  from  us  ;  and 
all  is  under  Heaven's  ban  and  interdict,  and  there  is  no  worship, 
or  worthship,  or  worth  or  blessedness  in  the  Earth  any  more ! 

Independence,  'lord  of  the  lion-heart  and  eagle-eye,'  —  alas, 
yes,  he  is  a  lord  we  have  got  acquainted  with  in  these  late  times  : 
a  very  indispensable  lord,  for  spurning  off  with  due  energy  innu- 
merable sham-superiors,  tailor-made  :  honour  to  him,  entire  suc- 
cess to  him  !  Entire  success  is  sure  to  him.  But  he  must  not 
stop  there,  at  that  small  success,  with  his  eagle  eye.  He  has 
now  a  second  far  greater  success  to  gain  :  To  seek  out  his  real 
superiors,  whom  not  the  Tailor  but  the  Almighty  God  has  made 
superior  to  him,  and  see  a  little  what  he  will  do  with  these?  Re- 
bel against  these  also  1  Pass  by  with  minatory  eagle-glance, 
with  calm-sniffing  mockery,  or  even  without  any  mockery  or  sniff, 
when  these  present  themselves  1  The  lion-hearted  will  never 
dream  of  such  a  thing.  Forever  far  be  it  from  him  !  His  mina- 
tory eagle-glance  will  veil  itself  in  softness  of  the  dove  :  his  lion- 
heart  will  become  a  lamb's  ;  all  its  just  indignation  changed  into 
just  reverence,  dissolved  in  blessed  floods  of  noble  humble  love, 
how  much  heavenlier  than  any  pride,  nay,  if  you  will,  how  much 
prouder  !  I  know  him,  this  lion-hearted  eagle-eyed  one  ;  have 
met  him,  rushing  on  '  with  his  bosom  bare,'  in  a  very  distracted, 
dishevelled  manner,  the  times  being  hard  ;  —  and  can  say,  and 
guarantee  on  my  life,  That  in  him  is  no  rebellion  ;  that  in  him  is 
the  reverse  of  rebellion,  the  needful  preparation  for  obedience. 
For  if  you  do  mean  to  obey  God-made  superiors,  your  first  step  is 
to  sweep  out  the  Tailor-made  ones  ;  order  them,  under  penalties, 
to  vanish,  to  make  ready  for  vanishing  ! 

Nay,  what  is  best  of  all,  he  cannot  rebel  if  he  would.  Supe- 
riors whom  God  has  made  for  us  we  cannot  order  to  withdraw ! 
Not  in  the  least.  No  Grand-Turk  himself,  thickest  quilted  tailor- 
made  Brother  of  the  Sun  and  Moon,  can  do  it :  but  an  Arab  man, 
in  cloak  of  his  own  clouting,  with  black-beaming  eyes,  with  flaming 


286  HOROSCOPE. 

sovereign-heart  direct  from  the  centre  of  the  Universe  ;  and  also,  I 
am  told,  with  terrible  '  horse-shoe  vein  '  of  swelling  wrath  in  his 
brow,  and  lightning  (if  you  will  not  have  it  as  light)  tingling 
through  every  vein  of  him, — he  rises;  says  authoritatively: 
"  Thickest-quilted  Grand  Turk,  tailor-made  Brother  of  the  Sun 
and  Moon,  No  :  — I  withdraw  not ;  thou  shalt  obey  me  or  with- 
draw !  "  And  so  accordingly  it  is  :  thickest-quilted  Grand-Turks 
and  all  their  progeny,  to  this  hour,  obey  that  man  in  the  remark- 
ablest  manner  ;  preferring  not  to  withdraw. 

O  brother,  it  is  an  endless  consolation  to  me,  in  this  disorganic, 
as  yet  so  quack-ridden,  what  you  may  well  call  hag-ridden  and 
hell-ridden  world,  to  find  that  disobedience  to  the  Heavens,  when 
they  send  any  messenger  whatever,  is  and  remains  impossible. 
It  cannot  be  done  ;  no  Turk  grand  or  small  can  do  it.  '  Shew 
'  the  dullest  clodpole,'  says  my  invaluable  German  Friend,  '  shew 
1  the  haughtiest  featherhead,  that  a  soul  higher  than  himself  is 
1  here  ;  were  his  knees  stiffened  into  brass,  he  must  down  and 
'  worship.' 


CHAPTER    VII. 


THE    GIFTED. 


Yes,  in  what  tumultuous  huge  anarchy  soever  a  Noble  human 
Principle  may  dwell  and  strive,  such  tumult  is  in  the  way  of  being 
calmed  into  a  fruitful  sovereignty.  It  is  inevitable.  No  chaos 
can  continue  chaotic  with  a  soul  in  it.  Besouled  with  earnest 
human  Nobleness,  did  not  slaughter,  violence  and  fire-god  fury, 
grow  into  a  Chivalry  ;  into  a  blessed  Loyalty  of  Governor  and 
Governed'?  And  in  Work,  which  is  of  itself  noble,  and  the  only 
true  fighting,  there  shall  be  no  such  possibility  ?  Believe  it  not ; 
it  is  incredible  ;  the  whole  Universe  contradicts  it.  Here  too  the 
Chactaw  Principle  will  be  subordinated  ;  the  Man  Principle  will, 
by  degrees,  become  superior,  become  supreme. 

I  know  Mammon  too  ;  Banks-of-England,  Credit-Systems, 
world-wide  possibilities  of  work  and  traffic  ;  and  applaud  and  ad- 
mire them.  Mammon  is  like  Fire  ;  the  usefullest  of  all  servants, 
if  the  frightfullest  of  all  masters  !  The  Cliffords,  Fitzadelms,  and 
Chivalry  Fighters  '  wished  to  gain  victory,'  never  doubt  it  :  but 
victory,  unless  gained  in  a  certain  spirit,  was  no  victory  ;  defeat, 
sustained  in  a  certain  spirit,  was  itself  victory.  I  say  again  and 
again,  had  they  counted  the  scalps  alone,  they  had  continued 
Chactaws,  and  no  Chivalry  or  lasting  victory  had  been.  And  in 
Industrial  Fighters  and  Captains  is  there  no  nobleness  discovera- 
able  1  To  these  alone  of  Men,  shall  there  forever  be  no  blessed- 
ness but  in  swollen  coffers'?  To  see  beauty,  order,  gratitude, 
loyal  human  hearts  around  them,  shall  be  of  no  moment ;  to  see 
fuliginous  deformity,  mutiny,  hatred  and  despair,  with  the  addi- 
tion of  half  a  million  guineas,  shall  be  better?  Heaven's  blessed- 
ness not  there  ;  Hell's  cursedness,  and  your  half-million  bits  of 
metal  a  substitute  for  that !     Is  there  no  profit  in  diffusing  Hea- 


288  HOROSCOPE. 

ven's  blessedness,  but  only  in  gaining  gold  ?  —  If  so  I  apprise  the 
Mill-owner  and  Millionaire,  that  he  too  must  prepare  for  vanish- 
ing ;  that  neither  is  he  born  to  be  of  the  sovereigns  of  this  world  ; 
bat  to  be  trampled  and  chained  down,  in  whatever  terrible  meth- 
ods, and  brass-collared  safe,  among  the  born  thralls  of  this  world ! 
We  cannot  have  Canailles  and  Doggeries  that  will  not  make  some 
Chivalry  of  themselves  :  our  noble  Planet  is  impatient  of  such  ; 
in  the  end,  totally  intolerant  of  such  ! 

For  the  Heavens,  unwearying  in  their  bounty,  do  send  other 
souls  into  this  world,  to  whom  yet,  as  to  their  forerunners,  in  Old 
Roman,  in  Old  Hebrew  and  all  noble  times,  the  omnipotent  guinea 
is,  on  the  whole  an  impotent  guinea.  Has  your  half-dead  avari- 
cious Corn-Law-Lord,  your  half- alive  avaricious  Cotton-Law-Lord, 
never  seen  one  such?  Such  are,  not  one  but  several;  are,  and 
will  be  ;  unless  the  gods  have  doomed  this  world  to  swift  dire 
ruin.  These  are  they,  the  elect  of  the  world:  the  born  cham- 
pions, strong  men,  and  liber atory  Samsons  of  this  poor  world  : 
whom  the  poor  Delilah  world  will  not  always  shear  of  their 
strength  and  eyesight,  and  set  to  grind  in  darkness  at  its  poor  gin- 
wheel  !  Such  souls  are,  in  these  days,  getting  somewhat  out  of 
humour  with  the  world.  Your  very  Byron,  in  these  days,  is  at 
least  driven  mad  ;  flatly  refuses  fealty  to  the  world.  The  world 
with  its  injustices,  its  golden  brutalities,  and  dull  yellow  guineas, 
is  a  disgust  to  such  souls  :  the  ray  of  Heaven  that  is  in  them  does 
at  least  predoom  them  to  be  very  miserable  here.  Yes  :  —  and 
yet  all  misery  is  faculty  misdirected,  strength  that  has  not  yet 
found  its  way.  The  black  whirlwind  is  mother  of  the  lightning. 
No  smoke,  in  any  sense,  but  can  become  flame  and  radiance ! 
Such  soul,  once  graduated  in  Heaven's  stern  University,  steps 
out  superior  to  your  guinea. 

Dost  thou  know,  O  sumptuous  Corn-Lord,  Cotton-Lord,  muti- 
nous Trades-unionist  gin-vanquished,  undeliverable ;  O  much 
enslaved  world,  —  this  man  is  not  a  slave  with  thee!  None  of 
thy  promotions  is  necessary  for  him.  His  place  is  with  the  stars 
of  Heaven  :  to  thee  it  may  be  momentous,  to  him  it  is  indifferent, 
whether  thou  place  him  in  the  lowest  hut,  or  forty  feet  higher  at 
the  top  of  thy  stupendous  high  tower,  while  here  on  Earth.  The 
joys  of  Earth  that  are  precious,  they  depend  not  on  thee  and  thy 


THE    GIFTED.  289 

promotions.  Food  and  raiment,  and,  round  a  social  hearth,  souls 
who  love  him,  whom  he  loves  :  these  are  already  his.  He  wants 
none  of  thy  rewards  ;  behold  also,  he  fears  none  of  thy  penalties. 
Thou  canst  not  answer  by  killing  him;  the  case  of  Anaxarchus 
thou  canst  kill ;  but  not  the  self  of  Anaxarchus,  the  word  or  act 
of  Anaxarchus.  To  this  man  death  is  not  a  bugbear  ;  to  this  man 
life  is  already  as  earnest  and  awful,  and  beautiful  and  terrible  as 
death. 

Not  a  May-game  is  this  man's  life  ;  but  a  battle  and  a  march,  a 
warfare  with  principalities  and  powers.  No  idle  promenade 
through  fragrant  orange-groves  and  green  flowery  spaces,  waited 
on  by  the  choial  Muses  and  the  rosy  Hours  :  it  is  a  stern  pilgrim- 
age through  burning  sandy  solitudes,  through  regions  of  thick- 
ribbed  ice.  He  walks  among  men  ;  loves  men,  with  inexpressible 
soft  pity,  —  as  they  cannot  love  him:  but  his  soul  dwells  in 
solitude,  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  Creation.  In  green  oases  by 
the  palm-tree  wells,  he  rests  a  space ;  but  anon  he  has  to  journey 
forward,  escorted  by  the  Terrors  and  the  Splendours,  the  Arch- 
demons  and  Archangels.  All  Heaven,  all  Pandemonium  are  his 
escort.  The  stars,  keen-glancing,  from  the  Immensities,  send 
tidings  to  him  ;  the  graves,  silent  with  their  dead,  from  the  Eter- 
nities.    Deep  calls  for  him  un'to  Deep. 

Thou,  O  world,  how  wilt  thou  secure  thyself  against  this  man"? 
Thou  canst  not  hire  him  by  thy  guineas  ;  not  by  thy  gibbets  and 
law-penalties  restrain  him.  He  eludes  thee  like  a  spirit.  Thou 
canst  not  forward  him,  thou  canst  not  hinder  him.  Thy  penalties, 
thy  poverties,  neglects,  contumelies:  behold,  all  these  are  good 
for  him.  Come  to  him  as  an  enemy ;  turn  from  him  as  an  un- 
friend ;  only  do  not  this  one  thing,  —  infect  him  not  with  thy  own 
delusion:  the  benign  Genius,  were  it  by  very  death,  shall  guard 
him  against  this  !  —  What  wilt  thou  do  with  him  ?  He  is  above 
thee  like  a  god.  Thou,  in  thy  stupendous  three-inch  pattens,  art 
under  him.  He  is  thy  born  king,  thy  conqueror  and  supreme 
Lawgiver :  not  all  the  guineas,  and  cannons,  and  leather  and  pru- 
nella under  the  sky  can  save  thee  from  him.  Hardest  thickskinned 
Mammon-world,  ruggedest  Caliban,  shall  obey  him,  or  become 
not  Caliban  but  a  cramp.  O,  if  in  this  man,  whose  eyes  can  flash 
Heaven's  Lightning,  and  make  all  Calibans  into  a  cramp,  there 
25 


290  HOROSCOPE. 

dwelt  not,  as  the  essence  of  his  very  being,  a  God's  Justice,  hu- 
man Nobleness,  Veracity  and  Mercy,  —  I  should  tremble  for  the 
World.  But  his  strength,  let  us  rejoice  to  understand,  is  even 
this  :  The  quantity  of  Justice,  of  Valour  and  Pity  that  is  in  him. 
To  hypocrites  and  tailored  quacks  in  high  places,  his  eyes  are 
lightning ;  but  they  melt  in  dewy  Pity  softer  than  a  mother's  to 
the  downpressed,  maltreated  ;  in  his  heart,  in  his  great  thought, 
is  a  sanctuary  for  all  the  wretched.  This  world's  improvement 
is  forever  sure. 

*  Man  of  Genius?'  Thou  hast  small  notion,  meseems,  O 
Mecamas  Tvviddledee,  of  what  a  Man  of  Genius  is  !  Read  in  thy 
New  Testament,  and  elsewhere,  —  if,  with  floods  of  mealymouthed 
inanity,  with  miserable  froth-vortices  of  Cant  now  several  centu- 
ries old,  thy  New  Testament  is  not  all  bedimmed  for  thee.  Canst 
thou  read  in  thy  New  Testament  at  all  ?  The  Highest  Man  of 
Genius,  knowest  thou  Him  ;  Godlike  and  a  God  to  this  hour? 
His  crown  a  Crown  of  Thorns  ?  Thou  fool,  with  thy  empty  God- 
hoods,  Apotheoses  edge  gilt ;  the  Crown  of  Thorns  made  into  a 
poor  jewel-room  Crown,  fit  for  the  head  of  blockheads  ;  the  bear- 
ing of  the  Cross  changed  to  a  riding  in  the  Long-Acre  Gig  ! 
Pause  in  thy  mass-chauntings,  in  thy  litanyings,  and  Calmuch 
prayings  by  machinery ;  and  pray,  if  noisily,  at  least  in  a  more 
human  manner.  How  with  thy  rubrics  and  dalmatics,  and  cloth- 
webs  and  cobwebs,  and  with  thy  stupidities  and  grovelling  base- 
heartedness,  hast  thou  hidden  the  Holiest  into  all  but  invisi- 
bility !  — 

'  Man  of  Genius  :  '  O  Mecaenas  Tvviddledee,  hast  thou  any 
notion  what  a  Man  of  Genius  is  ?  Genius  is  '  the  inspired  gift  of 
God !  '  It  is  the  clearer  presence  of  God  Most  High  in  a  man. 
Dim,  potential  in  all  men  ;  in  this  man  it  has  become  clear,  actual. 
So  says  John  Milton,  who  ought  to  be  a  judge  ;  so  answer  him 
the  Voices  of  all  Ages  and  all  Worlds.  Wouldst  thou  commune 
with  such  a  one,  — be  his  real  peer  then  :  does  that  lie  in  thee? 
Know  thyself,  and  thy  real  and  thy  apparent  place,  and  know 
him  and  his  real  and  his  apparent  place ;  and  act  in  some  noble 
conformity  therewith.  What !  The  star-fire  of  the  Empyrean 
shall  eclipse  itself,  and  illuminate  magic  lanterns  to  amuse  grown 
children?     He,  the  God-inspired,  is  to  twang  harps  for  thee,  and 


THE    GIFTED.  291 

blow  through  scrannel-pipes  ;  soothe  thy  sated  soul  with  visions 
of  new,  still  wider  Eldorados,  Houri  Paradises,  richer  Lands  of 
Cockaigne  ?  Brother,  this  is  not  he  ;  this  is  a  counterfeit,  this 
twangling,  jangling,  vain,  acrid,  scrannel-piping  man.  Thou  dost 
well  to  say  with  sick  Saul,  "It  is  naught,  such  harping!  "  — 
and  in  sudden  rage,  grasp  thy  spear,  and  try  if  thou  canst  pin 
such  a  one  to  the  wall.  King  Saul  was  mistaken  in  his  man,  but 
thou  art  right  in  thine.  It  is  the  due  of  such  a  one  :  nail  him  to 
the  wall,  and  leave  him  there.  So  ought  copper  shillings  to  be 
nailed  on  counters  ;  copper  geniuses  on  walls,  and  left  there  for  a 
sign !  — 

I  conclude  that  the  Men  of  Letters  too  may  become  a  '  Chival- 
ry,' an  actual  instead  of  a  virtual  Priesthood,  with  result  immeas- 
urable,—  so  soon  as  there  is  nobleness  in  themselves  for  that, 
and  to  a  certainty,  not  sooner  !  Of  intrinsic  Valetisms  you  can- 
not, with  whole  Parliaments  to  help  you,  make  a  Heroism.  Dog- 
geries never  so  gold-plated,  Doggeries  never  so  escutcheoned, 
Doggeries  never  so  diplomaed,  bepufFed,  gas-lighted,  continue 
Doggeries,  and  must  take  the  fate  of  such. 


CHAPTER  Till. 


THE    DIDACTIC. 


Certainly  it  were  a  fond  imagination  to  expect  that  any  preach- 
ing of  mine  could  abate  Mammonism  ;  that  Bobus  of  Houndsditch 
will  love  his  guineas  less,  or  his  poor  soul  more,  for  any  preach- 
ing of  mine  !  But  there  is  one  Preacher  who  does  preach  with 
effect,  and  gradually  persuade  all  persons  :  his  name  is  Destiny, 
is  Divine  Providence,  and  his  Sermon  the  inflexible  Course  of 
Things.  Experience  does  take  dreadfully  high  school-wages ; 
but  he  teaches  like  no  other  ! 

I  revert  to  Friend  Prudence  the  good  Quaker's  refusal  of '  seven 
thousand  pounds  to  boot.'  Friend  Prudence's  practical  conclu- 
sion will  by  degrees,  become  that  of  all  rational  practical  men 
whatsoever.  On  the  present  scheme  and  principle,  Work  cannot 
continue.  Trades'  Strikes,  Trades'  Unions,  Chartisms  ;  mutiny, 
squalor,  rage  and  desperate  revolt,  growing  ever  more  desperate, 
will  go  on  their  way.  As  dark  misery  settles  down  on  us,  and 
our  refuges  of  lies  fall  in  pieces  one  after  one,  the  hearts  of  men, 
now  at  last  serious,  will  turn  to  refuges  of  truth.  The  eternal 
stars  shine  out  again,  so  soon  as  it  is  dark  enough. 

Begirt  with  desperate  Trades'  Unionism  and  anarchic  mutiny, 
many  an  Industrial  Law-word,  by  and  by,  who  has  neglected  to 
make  laws  and  keep  them,  will  be  heard  saying  to  himself :  "  Why 
have  I  realised  five  hundred  thousand  pounds  ?  I  rose  early  and 
sat  late,  I  toiled  and  moiled,  and  in  the  sweat  of  my  brow  and  of 
my  soul,  I  strove  to  gain  this  money,  that  I  might  become  con- 
spicuous, and  have  some  honour  among  my  fellow  creatures.  I 
wanted  them  to  honour  me,  to  love  me.  The  money  is  here, 
earned  with  my  best  Life-blood  :  but  the  honour?  I  am  encircled 
with  squalor,  with  hunger,  rage,  and  sooty  desperation.    Not  hon- 


THE    DIDACTIC.  293 

oured,  hardly  even  envied  ;  only  fools  and  the  flunkey-species  so 
much  as  envy  me.  I  am  conspicuous,  —  as  a  mark  for  curses 
and  brickbats.  What  good  is  it  ?  My  five  hundred  scalps  hang 
here  in  my  wigwam  ;  would  to  Heaven  I  had  sought  something 
else  than  the  scalps  ;  would  to  Heaven  I  had  been  a  Christian 
Fighter,  not  a  Chactaw  one  !  To  have  ruled  and  fought  not  in  a 
Mammonish  but  in  a  Godlike  spirit ;  to  have  had  the  hearts  of  the 
people  bless  me,  as  a  true  ruler  and  Captain  of  my  people  ;  to 
have  felt  my  own  heart  bless  me,  and  that  God  above  instead  of 
Mammon  below  was  blessing  me,  —  this  had  been  something. 
Out  of  my  sight,  ye  beggarly  five  hundred  scalps  of  bankers- 
thousands  ;  I  will  try  for  something  other,  or  account  my  life  a 
tragical  futility  !  " 

Friend  Prudence's  ^rock-ledge,'  as  we  called  it,  will  gradually 
disclose  itself  to  many  a  man  ;  to  all  men.  Gradually,  assaulted 
from  beneath  and  from  above,  the  Stygian  mud-deluge  of  Laissez- 
faire,  Supply-and-demand,  Cash-payment  the  one  Duty,  will  abate 
on  all  hands  ;  and  the  everlasting  mountain-tops,  and  secure  rock- 
foundations  that  reach  to  the  Centre  of  the  World,  and  rest  on 
Nature's  Self,  will  again  emerge,  to  found  on,  and  to  build  on. 
When  Mammon-worshippers  here  and  there  begin  to  be  God-wor- 
shippers, and  bipeds-of-prey  become  men,  and  there  is  a  Soul  felt 
once  more  in  the  huge-pulsing  elephantine  mechanic  Animalism 
of  this  Earth,  it  will  be  again  a  blessed  Earth. 

"  Men  cease  to  regard  money  1  "  cries  Bobus  of  Houndsditch  : 
"  What  else  do  all  men  strive  for?  The  very  Bishop  informs  me 
that  Christianity  cannot  get  on  without  a  minimum  of  Four  thou- 
sand five  hundred  in  its  pocket.  Cease  to  regard  money  1  That 
will  be  at  Doomsday  in  the  afternoon  !  "  0,  Bobus,  my  opinion  is 
somewhat  different.  My  opinion  is  that  the  Upper  Powers  have 
not  yet  determined  on  destroying  this  Lower  World.  A  respect- 
able, ever-increasing  minority  who  do  strive  for  something  higher 
than  money  I  with  confidence  anticipate  ;  ever  increasing,  till 
there  be  a  sprinkling  of  them  found  in  all  quarters,  as  salt  of  the 
Earth  once  more.  The  Christianity  that  cannot  get  on  without  a 
minimum  of  Four  thousand  five  hundred  will  give  place  to  some- 
thing better  that  can.  Thou  wilt  not  join  our  small  minority, 
thou  1  Not  till  Doomsday  in  the  afternoon  ?  Well ;  then,  at  least, 
thou  wilt  join  it,  thou  and  the  majority  in  mass  !  — 


294  HOROSCOPE. 

But  truly  it  is  beautiful  to  see  the  brutish  empire  of  Mammon 
cracking  everywhere,  giving  sure  promise  of  dying  or  of  being 
changed.  A  strange,  chill,  almost  ghastly  dayspring  strikes  up 
in  Yankeeland  itself:  my  Transcendal  friends  announce  there,  in 
a  distinct  though  somewhat  lankhaired  ungainly  manner,  that  the 
Demiurgus  Dollar  is  dethroned  ;  that  new  unheard-of  Demiur- 
gusships,  Priesthoods,  Aristocracies,  Growths  and  Destructions, 
are  already  visible  in  the  grey  of  coming  Time.  Chronos  is  de- 
throned by  Jove;  Odin  by  St.  Olaf:  the  Dollar  cannot  rule  in 
Heaven  for  ever.  No  ;  I  reckon,  not.  Socinian  Preachers  quit 
their  pulpits  in  Yankeeland,  saying,  "  Friends,  this  is  all  gone  to 
a  coloured  cobweb,  we  regret  to  say  !  "  —  and  retire  into  the  fields 
to  cultivate  onion-beds,  and  live  frugally  on  vegetables.  It  is  very 
notable.  Old  godlike  Calvinism  declares  that  its  old  body  is  now 
fallen  to  tatters  and  done  ;  and  its  mournful  ghost,  disembodied, 
seeking  new  embodiment,  pipes  again  in  the  winds;  —  a  ghost 
and  spirit  as  yet,  but  heralding  new  Spirit-worlds,  and  better  Dy- 
nasties than  the  Dollar  one. 

Yes,  here  as  there,  light  is  coming  into  the  world  ;  men  love 
not  darkness,  they  do  love  light.  A  deep  feeling  of  the  eternal 
nature  of  Justice  looks  out  among  us  everywhere,  —  even  through 
the  dull  eyes  of  Exeter  Hall ;  an  unspeakable  religiousness  strug- 
gles, in  the  most  helpless  manner,  to  speak  itself  in  Puseyisms 
and  the  like.  Of  our  Cant*,  all  condemnable,  how  much  is  not 
condemnable  without  pity,  we  had  almost  said,  without  respect ! 
The  inarticulate  worth  and  truth  that  is  in  England  goes  down 
yet  to  the  Foundations. 

Some  '  Chivalry  of  Labour,'  some  noble  Humanity  and  practical 
Divineness  of  Labour,  will  yet  be  realised  on  this  Earth.  Or  why 
ivill,  why  do  we  pray  to  Heaven  without  setting  our  own  shoulder 
to  the  wheel]  The  Present,  if  it  will  have  the  Future  accom- 
plish, shall  itself  commence.  Thou  who  prophesiest,  who  be- 
lievest,  begin  thou  to  fulfil.  Here  or  nowhere,  now  equally  as  at 
any  time  !  That  outcast  help-needing  thing  or  person,  trampled 
down  under  vulgar  feet  or  hoofs,  no  help  '  possible'  for  it,  no 
prize  offered  for  the  saving  of  it,  canst  not  thou  save  it,  then, 
without  prize  1  Put  forth  thy  hand,  in  God's  name;  know  that 
'  impossible,'  where  Truth  and  Mercy  and  the  everlasting  Voice 


THE   DIDACTIC.  295 

of  Nature  order,  has  no  place  in  the  brave  man's  dictionary.  That 
when  all  men  have  said  "  Impossible,"  and  tumbled  noisily  else- 
whither, and  thou  alone  art  left,  then  first  thy  time  and  possibility 
have  come.  It  is  for  thee  now  :  do  thou  that,  and  ask  no  man's 
counsel,  but  thy  own  only  and  God's.  Brother,  thou  hast  possi- 
bility in  thee  for  much  :  the  possibility  of  writing  on  the  eternal 
skies  the  record  of  a  heroic  life.  That  noble  downfallen  or  yet 
unborn  '  Impossibility  '  thou  canst  lift  it  up,  thou  canst,  by  the 
soul's  travail,  bring  it  into  clear  being.  That  loud  inane  Actuali- 
ty, with  millions  in  its  pocket,  too  '  possible  '  that,  which  rolls 
along  there,  with  quilted  trumpeters  blaring  round  it,  and  all  the 
world  escorting  it  as  mute  or  vocal  flunkey,  —  escort  it  not  thou  ; 
say  to  it,  either  nothing,  or  else  deeply  in  thy  heart:  "  Loud- 
blaring  Nonentity,  no  force  of  trumpets,  cash,  Long- Acre  art,  or 
universal  flunkeyhood  of  men,  makes  thee  an  Entity  ;  thou  art  a 
iVonentity,  and  deceptive  Simulacrum,  more  accursed  than  thou 
seemest.  Pass  on,  in  the  Devil's  name,  unworshipped  by  at 
least  one  man,  and  leave  the  thoroughfare  clear  !  " 

Not  on  Ilion's  or  Latium's  plains  ;  on  far  other  plains  and 
places  henceforth,  can  noble  deeds  be  now  done.  Not  on  Ilion's 
plains  ;  how  much  less  in  May  fair's  drawingrooms  !  Not  in  vic- 
tory over  poor  brother  French  or  Phrygians  ;  but  in  victory  over 
Frost-jotuns,  Marsh-giants,  over  demons  of  Discord,  Idleness,  In- 
justice, Unreason,  and  Chaos  come  again.  None  of  the  old 
Epics  is  longer  possible.  The  Epic  of  French  and  Phrygians 
was  comparatively  a  small  Epic  :  but  that  of  Flirts  and  Fribbles, 
what  is  that?  A  thing  that  vanishes  at  cock-crowing,  —  that 
already  begins  to  scent  the  morning  air  !  Game-preserving  Aris- 
tocracies, let  them  '  bush  '  never  so  effectually,  cannot  escape  the 
Subtle  Fowler.  Game  seasons  will  be  excellent,  and  again  will 
be  indifferent,  and  by  and  by  they  will  not  be  at  all.  The  Last 
Partridge  of  England,  of  an  England  where  millions  of  men  can 
get  no  corn  to  eat,  will  be  shot  and  ended.  Aristocracies  with 
beards  on  their  chins  will  find  other  to  do  than  amuse  themselves 
with  trundling-hoops. 

But  it  is  to  you  ye  Workers,  who  do  already  work,  and  are  as 
grown  men,  noble  and  honourable  in  a  sort,  that  the  whole  world 
calls   for  new  work  and   nobleness.     Subdue  Mutiny,  Discord, 


296  HOROSCOPE. 

wide-spread  Despair,  by  manfulness,  justice,  mercy  and  wisdom. 
Chaos  is  dark,  deep  as  Hell ;  let  light  be,  and  there  is  instead  a 
green,  flowery  World.  O,  it  is  great,  and  there  is  no  other  great- 
ness. To  make  some  nook  of  God's  Creation  a  little  fruitfuller, 
better,  more  worthy  of  God  ;  to  make  some  human  hearts  a  little 
wiser,  manfuller,  happier, — more  blessed,  less  accursed!  It  is 
work  for  a  God.  Sooty  Hell  of  Mutiny  and  Savagery  and  despair 
can,  by  man's  energy,  be  made  a  kind  of  Heaven  ;  cleared  of  its 
soot,  of  its  Mutiny,  of  its  need  to  mutiny  ;  the  everlasting  arch  of 
Heaven's  azure  o'erspanning  it  too,  and  its  cunning  mecha- 
nisms and  tall  chimney-steeples,  as  a  birth  of  Heaven  ;  God  and 
all  men  looking  on  it  well  pleased. 

Unstained  by  wasteful  deformities,  by  wasted  tears  or  heart's- 
blood  of  men,  or  any  defacement  of  the  Pit,  noble  fruitful  Labour, 
growing  ever  nobler,  will  come  forth,  —  the  grand  sole  miracle 
of  Man  ;  whereby  man  has  risen  from  the  low  places  of  this 
Earth,  very  literally,  into  divine  Heavens.  Ploughers,  Spinners, 
Builders  ;  Prophets,  Poets,  Kings  ;  Brindleys  and  Goethes,  Odins 
and  Arkwrights ;  all  martyrs,  and  noble  men,  and  gods  are  of 
one  grand  Host :  immeasurable  ;  marching  ever  forward  since 
the  Beginnings  of  the  World.  The  enormous,  all-conquering, 
flame-crowned  Host;  noble  every  soldier  in  it ,  sacred,  and  alone 
noble.  Let  him  who  is  not  of  it  hide  himself;  let  him  tremble 
for  himself.  Stars  at  every  button  cannot  make  him  noble  ; 
sheaves  of  Bath-garters,  nor  bushels  of  Georges  ;  nor  any  other 
contrivance  but  manfully  enlisting  in  it,  valiantly  taking  place  and 
step  in  it.  O  Heavens,  will  he  not  bethink  himself;  he  too  is 
so  needed  in  the  Host !  It  were  so  blessed,  thrice-blessed,  for 
himself,  and  for  us  all  !  In  hope  of  the  Last  Partridge,  and 
some  Duke  of  Weimar,  among  our  English  Dukes,  we  will  be 
patient  yet  awThile. 

The  Future  hides  in  it 
Good  hap  and  sorrow  ; 
We  press  still  thorow, 
Naught  that  abides  in  it 
Daunting  us,  —  onward. 


THE    END. 


^ 


*,..;,-.  -tssj,-.,    '    .        . 


